Lana del Rey settling plagiarism dispute

The representatives of the famous US singer Lana del Rey have reached an out-of-court settlement with the Spanish musician Lucas Bolaño and filmmaker Julio Drove to avoid going to court.

Bolaño and Drove sued Lana del Rey in 2022 for using without permission a 17 second excerpt from one of their works entitled “Sky” for her music video “Summertime Sadness” in 2012. They affirmed that she not only copied the images from their short film “Sky”, but also stole the audio, that belongs to “Strange Dumpling Cheeks”, an album released by Lucas Bolaño in 2008 under a Creative Commons 3.0 licence. This licence allowed copying and modification of the work as long as it was used for non-commercial purposes and authorship was acknowledged. The musician’s lawyers claimed that the video had generated millions of dollars and that the plaintiffs have not seen a penny of these profits and have not ever been credited for their work.

The singer’s lawyers asked the judge to dismiss the lawsuit because they argued that Bolaño had waited too many years to sue as he did it ten years later after the release of the music video “Summertime Sadness”. However, Bolaño affirmed that he did not realise that plagiarism had occurred until 2021.

Last May, the judge refused to dismiss the lawsuit against Lana and sent the case to a jury trial. It was then that the lawyers of both parties agreed and signed an out-of-court settlement. Specific terms of the settlement were not disclosed.