Court affirms copyright infringement ruling favoring rapper Jay-Z

A U.S. court of appeals has affirmed a lower court decision and ruled in favor of rapper Jay-Z in a long-running copyright infringement dispute over his use of music in his hit song “Big Pimpin’” that was written by an Egyptian composer.

Thursday’s ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco in Osama Ahmed Fahmy v. Jay-Z et al. stems from the song Khosara, which was composed by Baligh Handy in 1957 for the Egyptian movie “Fata Ahlami.”

In 1999, rapper Shawn Carter, who is professionally known as Jay-Z, and music producer Timothy Mosely produced “Big Pimpin’”, which used portions of Khosara as a background track to Jay-Z’s rap lyrics, according to the ruling.

In 2002, Mr. Fahmy, as representative of the Hamdi heirs including himself, signed an agreement transferring rights to an Egyptian company, Alam el Phan, which is the central dispute in the lawsuit, according to the ruling.

Mr. Fahmy filed suit against Jay-Z in 2007, claiming to have retained certain rights to the Khosara copyright despite the 2002 agreement, according to the ruling. The U.S. District Court in Pasadena ruled in Jay-Z’s favor, which was affirmed by a unanimous three-judge court.

Egyptian law “recognizes a transferable economic right to prepare derivative works,” which were “unambiguously” conveyed to the Egyptian company in the 2002 agreement, said the ruling.

Separate from economic rights, copyright holders in Egypt also have “moral” rights that confer upon copyright owners “the right to object to those derivative works the author deems to be ‘distortions’ or ‘mutilations’ of the work, whether or not the relevant economic rights have been transferred,” according to the ruling.

Mr. Fahmy contended he retained moral rights to the music. In affirming the lower court ruling, the panel held, however, that “the moral rights Fahmy retained by operation of Egyptian law are not enforceable in U.S. federal court.”

“Even if they were,” said the ruling, “Fahmy has not complied with the compensation requirement of Egyptian law, which does not provide for his requested damages, and which provides for only injunctive relief from an Egyptian court.”