IP Law Daily, COPYRIGHT—C.D. Cal.: Kanye West gets a partial victory in lawsuit over two songs from Donda album, (Mar 5, 2026)

By Matthew Hersh, J.D.

But the court rejects Ye’s invitation to expand Ninth Circuit doctrine on the question of implied license.

The fact that four singer-songwriters initially voiced their approval for a track to be sampled by Kanye West was not enough on its own to find that they implicitly granted him a license to that use under Ninth Circuit doctrine, the federal court for the Central District of California has held. But the court, while distancing itself from other jurisdictions that have given the implied license doctrine a more expansive read, nonetheless narrowed the complaint based on standing and substantial similarity grounds (Artist Revenue Advocates v. West, No. 2:24-cv-06018-MWC-BFM (C.D. Cal. Feb. 26, 2026)).

The lawsuit involves a clash of two major players in the rap scene: Khalil Abdul-Rahman (better known by his stage name DJ Khalil) and Kanye Omari West (most recently known by his stage name “Ye”). Khalil collaborated with three other prominent artists, Sam Barsh, Dan Seeff, and Josh Mease, to create a musical work and sound recording called MSD PT2 (the song was never released publicly). Three years later, Ye released Donda, his tenth studio album (although his last to be released through a major label). Rahman and his collaborators immediately came to suspect that their unreleased musical work had been purloined on two of the songs on Donda, Hurricane and Moon.

Rahman and his collaborators, acting through an LLC they mutually owned, filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Ye. The lawsuit also named Ye’s musical publisher and record label as well as a long list of other alleged collaborators and partners.

After discovery, Ye moved for summary judgment, leading to this opinion.

Standing. The court first narrowed the complaint substantially on standing grounds. The four artists alleged that Ye purloined both the musical composition and the sound recording for MSD PT2. Nobody questioned that they could proceed on their lawsuit over the sound recording—Rahman owned it outright from the beginning and had then transferred it to the LLC to pursue this lawsuit. But the musical composition presented a different question. The four artists collaborated on the song, so they each owned a share of the musical composition when it was first written. But did any of their shares of the musical composition ever get into the hands of the LLC? The court found that it did not.

The court’s conclusion rested on a complicated chain of events, but ultimately a simple principle of law. Rahman had transferred his share of the compositional rights to Universal Music Publishing, where it remained—so that could not be the source of the LLC’s standing. The other three artists, meanwhile, at first transferred their own rights—in one case directly, in another case through an intermediary—to a publishing company called PEN Music. But then the artists purported to transfer their own rights again, this time to the LLC. The problem for them was a simple one, the court found—only PEN Music, not the artists, at that time held the exclusive rights to the music. The transfer was therefore null and void.

Nor did it matter that PEN Music allegedly assented to the transfer of the rights to the LLC. The four artists argued that PEN Music “at least orally” authorized the grant allegedly transferring the rights to the LLC. But that argument ran into a solid roadblock in the form of the Copyright Act. Under Section 204(a) of the Act, 17 U.S.C. § 204(a), a transfer of copyright ownership, other than by operation of law, “is not valid unless an instrument of conveyance, or a note or memorandum of the transfer, is in writing and signed by the owner of the rights conveyed or such owner’s duly authorized agent.” This statutory text, the court emphasized, “leaves no room for disagreement.” The purported transfer to the LLC, without the signed agreement of PEN Music, was simply void.

Implied license. But while Ye was able to narrow the claim on standing grounds, he had less luck when arguing that he had an implied license to use the work on his album. The evidence in the record showed that when Ye first posted to social media an early release of one of the allegedly infringing songs, the four artists applauded the work and the publicity it would generate for them. Did that mean they had implicitly granted Ye a license to use the work in his final released album? The court found that it did not.

The problem for Ye, the court found, was that the implicit approval of the artists was not enough, on its own, to imply a license. The Ninth Circuit has found, the court noted, that an implied license is granted when “(1) a person (the licensee) requests the creation of a work, (2) the creator (the licensor) makes that particular work and delivers it to the licensee who requested it, and (3) the licensor intends that the licensee-requestor copy and distribute his work.” Here, the court noted, it was clear that the four artists did not create the work at Ye’s request. Nonetheless, Ye argued, the fact that they at one point approved his use could show an implied license on its own. The court did not agree.

The problem with Ye’s argument, the court noted, was that it simply could not be squared with Ninth Circuit doctrine. Some federal courts in California, as well as in several jurisdictions outside of the Ninth Circuit, have found that while the three elements stated by the Ninth Circuit were sufficient to find an implied license, they were not in all cases necessary. Rather, those courts have found, the proper test was instead to look to “the totality of the circumstances surrounding the transaction to determine whether an implied license was granted.” But “in the face of a clear standard from the Ninth Circuit as to the three factors to consider when evaluating an allegedly implied license,” the court found, “the Court cannot depart absent authority allowing it to do so.” The implied license argument would fail.

Copyright infringement. Although Ye could not narrow the complaint on the grounds of implied license, he did narrow the complaint further on the grounds of substantial similarity. Because only the sound recording was now at issue, the court found, the question here was whether the two challenged songs contained direct samples of the underlying work. Even the four artists’ expert acknowledged that the released versions of the two songs did not contain any such samples—so those songs would have to be taken out of the case. But there remained a genuine dispute of fact, the court noted, over whether the work had been sampled in earlier versions of one of the songs, including those posted on social media and used at listening parties. As to those versions, the court found, the case would have to continue.

The Case is No. 2:24-cv-06018-MWC-BFM.

Judge: Williams, M.

Attorneys: Irene Y. Lee (Russ August and Kabat) for Artist Revenue Advocates, LLC. Christopher Rosario (Martorell Law APC) for Kanye Omari West.

Companies: Artist Revenue Advocates, LLC

Cases: Copyright TechnologyInternet CaliforniaNews GCNNews