Background
Cleveland “Clevie” Browne, the estate of Wycliffe “Steely” Johnson, and related rightsholders alleged that a large catalog of reggaeton songs copied rhythmic and instrumental material from Fish Market, Dem Bow, and related recordings. The sprawling copyright suit names performers and companies associated with songs by Bad Bunny, Drake, Daddy Yankee, J Balvin, Karol G, and many others.
In July 2026, Judge André Birotte Jr. denied competing summary-judgment motions, finding factual disputes about the identification, characterization, and protectability of the asserted “Fish Market Elements.” A group of defendants associated with Rimas Entertainment and Bad Bunny asked the court to reconsider. Other defendants, including Drake and OVO Sound, joined the request.
The reconsideration motion focused on a threshold problem: the plaintiffs described the claimed selection and arrangement by drawing musical elements from multiple works and from different portions of those works, but copyright protects the expression fixed in an identifiable work. Defendants argued that the plaintiffs had never identified one copyrighted work containing the complete combination they sought to enforce.
The Court’s Holding
The court granted reconsideration and partial summary judgment to the defendants on the plaintiffs’ selection-and-arrangement theory. It vacated the part of its July order that had denied defendants’ summary-judgment motion on that theory.
A protectable selection and arrangement must be embodied in a particular copyrighted work, the court reasoned. A plaintiff cannot take elements appearing in different places or works, aggregate or rearrange them during litigation, and treat the newly assembled combination as the copyrighted expression. The court found that the record did not establish that the two-bar transcription in the complaint—or the broader combination the plaintiffs sought to protect—existed in any one of the copyrighted works.
The plaintiffs had referred collectively to Fish Market, Dem Bow, and Pounder Dub Mix II, while their explanations of where the asserted combination appeared shifted over the course of the litigation. Their later statement that the complete pattern appeared in Fish Market did not solve the legal problem if the theory depended on isolating elements from their original context and reconstituting them into a different arrangement.
The court carefully limited its ruling. It did not hold that rhythmic combinations can never be copyrighted, that a protectable arrangement must always be a continuous two-bar phrase, or that derivative works can never help prove originality. It also did not decide whether the individual rhythmic elements were original. The ruling was that this particular theory could not proceed because the plaintiffs had failed to identify the copyrighted work embodying the specific selection and arrangement they sought to enforce.
The court denied defendants’ alternative request to certify the earlier order for an immediate interlocutory appeal. It directed the parties to propose a schedule for the claims and issues that remained, so the September ruling narrowed the case rather than ending the entire lawsuit.
Key Takeaways
- A selection-and-arrangement claim must point to one work. Copyright protects an original arrangement fixed in a particular copyrighted work, not an abstract combination assembled from multiple sources during litigation.
- The ruling materially changed the July result. The court withdrew its earlier refusal to grant defendants summary judgment and eliminated the plaintiffs’ asserted selection-and-arrangement theory.
- The decision is narrower than a declaration that dembow is free for all. The court expressly declined to decide whether the rhythmic elements were original or whether rhythmic arrangements can be protected in other circumstances.
- The litigation continued. The order called for a schedule addressing remaining claims and issues; it was partial summary judgment, not a final judgment disposing of the action.
Why It Matters
The opinion supplies an important limiting principle for music-copyright cases. Plaintiffs may rely on the creative arrangement of familiar musical building blocks, but they must identify the actual work in which that arrangement is fixed. Experts cannot create a new copyrighted combination by collecting similarities from different locations or recordings after suit is filed.
For Bad Bunny, Drake, and the many other reggaeton defendants, the order removes the central theory that had appeared headed for a jury only two months earlier. For artists and rightsholders more broadly, it underscores that precision about the asserted work is not merely an evidentiary detail—it defines the subject matter and scope of the copyright itself.