Photo Credit: Raph PH / CC by 2.0
Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, BMG, and Universal Music have officially beaten an appeal in a copyright suit centering on “Living in a Ghost Town.”
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals just recently affirmed a prior district court ruling in favor of the Rolling Stones members as well as the label co-defendants. Last time we checked in on the courtroom confrontation, the plaintiff towards the top of 2024 set his appeal in motion.
That Spain-based plaintiff, an artist named Sergio Garcia Fernandez and known professionally as Angelslang, accused the defendants of lifting without permission from two tracks to create the Stones’ “Living in a Ghost Town” (2020).
These allegedly infringed works, the filing party claimed in the March of 2023 complaint, had been forwarded on CD to an “immediate family member” of Jagger back in 2013. Predictably, as the plaintiff told it, the tracks’ positive reception laid the groundwork for the alleged infringement (extending to a variety of elements) the better part of a decade later.
As things stand, a stateside court has yet to rule on the validity of those claims. To be sure, the action was tossed on jurisdictional grounds in October of 2023, when Judge Eldon E. Fallon, in deeming his court an improper venue for the case, reiterated in part that “none of the defendants ‘reside’ or ‘may be found’ in this district.”
The plaintiff then unsuccessfully urged the case’s transfer to a different venue, before January of 2024 brought the aforementioned appeal.
Now, though, with a three-judge appellate panel having “considered on the record on appeal and the briefs on file,” the prior dismissal order has been affirmed. Digging into the straightforward eight-page opinion behind the newer ruling, the presiding judges explained in more words that simply releasing the allegedly infringed music in Louisiana isn’t sufficient to establish jurisdiction in the state.
Likewise unconvincing is the personal jurisdiction argument when it comes to the allegedly infringed works’ potential to eventually reach Louisiana.
“Not only do the defendants lack minimum contacts with the forum, but there is no connection between the forum and the specific claims at issue,” the panel spelled out.
Lastly, the judges also called for the plaintiff artist to cover the costs incurred by the defendants in relation to the appeal. According once again to the appropriate legal text, the judgement will formally issue at the later of seven days following the rehearing-petition deadline or seven days after the entry of an order denying a petition for rehearing.
