IP Law Daily, COPYRIGHT—7th Cir.: A young rapper learns a harsh lesson: register your musical composition, (Oct 17, 2025)

By Matthew Hersh, J.D.

A chart-topping performer may well have appropriated the rapper’s musical composition, but the rapper had protection only for the sound recording.

A young rapper who alleged that a chart-topping stage performer purloined his beat track could not prevail on his copyright infringement claim because he had registered only a copyright in the sound recording of the beat and not in the underlying composition, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has held. But the court, in affirming the district court’s grant of summary judgment against the young rapper, also agreed that he was not required to pay attorney fees in the case (Richardson v. Kharbouch, No. 24-1119 (7th Cir. Oct. 16, 2025)).

The lawsuit was brought by Eddie Lee Richardson, who goes by Hotwire the Producer. In 2012, Richardson—then just 16 years old and an aspiring music producer—composed an instrumental piece of music titled “*Hood* Pushin Weight.” The track, as later described by the court of appeals, “has all the trappings of a successful hip-hop instrumental: deep percussion, rhythmic snare, and melodic detailing.” Richardson made sure to identify himself as the creator of the beat track by placing digital vocalizations of his professional moniker on the recording. However, he did not register a copyright in the track before uploading it to a music sharing website Months after creating his beat track, the court of appeals recounts, Richardson “unexpectedly recognized it in the background of a chart-topping hit.” That hit was “Ain’t Worried About Nothin” by rapper Karim Kharbouch, whose stage name is French Montana. Kharbouch work proved immensely popular, reaching number 10 on the Billboard charts and inspiring collaborations with some of the music industry’s biggest names, including Lil Wayne, Puff Daddy, Wiz Khalifa, Miley Cyrus, and The Game. The official music video for the song, posted on YouTube in 2013, has since accumulated roughly 100 million hits.

The young Richardson brought a lawsuit against Kharbouch for copyright infringement in 2016. After a round of summary judgment briefing, the court declined to grant summary judgment to either side—but also spotted an issue neither side had fully briefed. Richardson, it turned out, had registered a copyright in the sound recording of his work, but not the underlying musical composition. That raised a natural question: Did the Kharbouch song sample the recording itself or did it simply use the musical composition? After a further round of summary judgment briefing, the court found that Richardson could not persuade any reasonable jury that Kharbouch actually sampled the sound recording—thus ending the case brought by the young performer.

Richardson appealed, leading to this opinion.

Substantial similarity. The court affirmed the grant of summary judgment to Kharbouch. The problem, quite simply, the court noted, was that Richardson had not presented “sufficient evidence to show that Kharbouch infringed his copyrighted work.” That was because the class of copyright Richardson obtained, the court noted, protects against duplication of the digital track but permits imitation of the underlying musical composition. “Because Richardson has not presented evidence that Kharbouch duplicated his work as opposed to merely imitating it,” the court noted, it would have to affirm.

The court of appeals began with a short backgrounder on the difference between musical composition and sound recording rights. Holders of musical composition copyrights enjoy “rather expansive powers,” the court emphasized, including (among others) the exclusive right to reproduce, distribute, and perform those works. On the other hand, the court emphasized, sound recording copyrights only protect those sounds “that directly or indirectly recapture the actual sounds fixed in the recording” from infringement. These protections, the court noted, “do not extend to the making or duplication of another sound recording that consists entirely of an independent fixation of other sounds, even though such sounds imitate or simulate those in the copyrighted sound recording.”

Moreover, the court of appeals found, the district court had it right when it found that Richardson could not persuade a jury that Kharbouch sampled directly from his recording. To be sure, the court noted, the two beats may have sounded indistinguishable “to the naked ear.” But “opinions and allegations unsupported by facts are not enough to create a genuine factual dispute,” the court noted. And Richardson presented neither direct nor indirect evidence of actual sampling. He presented no deposition testimony from Kharbouch or his producer, for example, the court noted, “nor expert testimony suggesting that sampling occurred.” He also failed to provide indirect evidence of infringement—that is, evidence that Kharbouch had access to the beat track “such that it is reasonable to infer that he had an opportunity to duplicate the track and evidence of substantial similarity between [the two] such that it is reasonable to infer that sampling actually occurred.” Without such evidence, the court found, the young rapper could not proceed to trial.

Attorney fees. But while the court rejected Richardson’s claim of copyright infringement, it spared the young rapper from having to pay attorney fees. Under Seventh Circuit doctrine, the court noted, there is a “strong presumption” in favor of granting fees in copyright infringement cases. Nonetheless, the court found, district court acted within its discretion in denying fees here. The district court found, the court of appeals noted, that Richardson’s lawsuit was not frivolous, he did not have an improper motivation in filing it, and the claims were not objectively unreasonable. His testimony also demonstrated, the district court found, that he “failed to appreciate the technical differences between a sound recording and music composition copyright.” Indeed, the district court noted, Kharbouch himself did not raise or develop the sound recording copyright argument in his initial motion for summary judgment—undermining his own argument that the lawsuit was frivolous. The district court did not abuse its discretion by denying Kharbouch’s motion.

The Case is No. 24-1119.

Judge: Jackson-Akiwumi, C.

Attorneys: Tyiase Hasan (Law Office of Tyiase H. Hasan) for Eddie Richardson. Dariush G. Adli (Adli Law Group PC) for Karim Kharbouch.

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