IP Law Daily, COPYRIGHT—C.D. Cal.: Ye will have to pay up for use of music at a listening party, (Aug 10, 2026)

By Matthew Hersh, J.D.

Court refuses to grant a new trial on the issue of implied license.

Four artists who collaborated on a sound recording did not grant Kanye West an implied license merely because they celebrated after West played their track at a listening party, the District Court for the Central District of California has held. The court, in refusing to overturn a jury verdict that awarded the artists six-figure damages over the allegedly unlicensed exploitation of the work at the party, found that the artist now known as Ye did not make a convincing case for setting aside Ninth Circuit model jury instructions on the implied license issues and that it would be “perverse to establish that an artist cannot celebrate the use of their work without granting a license for that use” (Artist Revenue Advocates, LLC v. West, No. 2:24-cv-06018-MWC-BFM (C.D. Cal. Aug. 7, 2026)).

The lawsuit was brought by Khalil Abdul-Rahman (better known by his stage name DJ Khalil), Sam Barsh, Dan Seeff, and Josh Mease. The four songwriter-artists created a musical work and sound recording called MSD PT2 and delivered that track to one of Ye’s producers. Although Ye never wound up using the track on any released album, he used it as an initial version of the song “Hurricane” from his 2021 album “Donda.” He also played that initial version at a live-streamed listening party in Atlanta.

Rahman and his collaborators, acting through the LLC to which they had assigned their rights, filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Ye. The court, in a summary judgment ruling earlier this year, found that the artists had not established the LLC’s standing to sue Ye over his use of the musical composition at the listening party, but that the LLC could proceed to trial over Ye’s use of the sound recording. The court also refused to grant Ye summary judgment over his claim that he had an implied license from the four artists to use the work.

A jury found Ye and several of his related companies liable for copyright infringement and assessed Ye $176,153 in damages, with additional damages assessed against the companies. Ye brought a renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law as well as a motion for a new trial, leading to this opinion.

Express license. The court first found that Ye was not entitled to judgment as a matter of law on the question of express license. The parties offered conflicting testimony over whether the artists, through their manager and attorney, had expressly agreed on the terms of a license with Ye’s representatives. “Even assuming arguendo that the jury could find an express license," the court found, “there is also sufficient evidence to conclude that no express license existed.” Judgment as a matter of law was therefore “inappropriate where, as here, both parties have presented substantial evidence to support their contentions,” the court concluded.

Implied license. The court also found that Ye was not entitled to judgment as a matter of law, nor a new trial, over the question of implied license. A heavily contested issue before the court was whether the jury was correctly instructed about the legal standard to apply to Ye’s implied license argument. Under Ninth Circuit model jury instructions, a jury should find an implied license only if a defendant proves that (1) they requested that an author create a work, (2) the author made that particular work and delivered it to the defendant, and (3) the author intended that the defendant exploit the work. Ye insisted, to no avail, that the jury should be given an instruction that dropped the “request” element of the first prong and placed greater emphasis on the parties’ mutual intent. Did Ye have it right? The court found that he did not.

The problem with Ye’s argument, the court emphasized, was that it ran headlong into Ninth Circuit caselaw and the model instructions that were derived from them. “Had the Ninth Circuit wished to frame the relevant test as Defendants do—‘intent three ways’—[the model instruction] and its associated comment may have provided such a suggestion,” the court noted. Instead, however, the court emphasized, the instruction “references intent only once and does not contemplate displacing the relevant elements with only an intent-based inquiry.” Here, Ye acknowledged that he did not request the four artists create MSD PT2 or deliver it following his request. “Accordingly, because Defendants have failed to establish the first factor of the relevant test,” the court found, “judgment as a matter of law would contravene Ninth Circuit precedent.”

The inaptness of Ye’s proposed instruction, the court emphasized, was especially clear under the facts of this case. Some courts in the Ninth Circuit, the court noted, have found implied licenses where artists admitted they intended for their works to be exploited and “accepted royalties for years without ever claiming to be owed anything more.” But that was not the case here, the court found. Instead, the court noted, the four artists made no such admission “and had not accepted any royalties—let alone for years—prior to [Ye] using MSD PT2 at the [l]istening [p]arty.” Those cases were therefore inapplicable, the court concluded.

Finally, the court emphasized, it did not matter that the four artists “celebrated” the use of the track at the listening party at the time. “It would be perverse to establish that an artist cannot celebrate the use of their work without granting a license for that use,” the court found. Indeed, the court emphasized, “that standard would create a catch-22 for any artist—either they highlight their role in creating successful work and release the rights to sue for infringement, or they cannot claim credit for that work without immediately disparaging it as illegal, which could undermine the work’s success and their later compensation.”

Profit damages. The court also refused to grant Ye a new trial on damages. A plaintiff is entitled to seek recovery of a defendant’s profits from the unlicensed exploitation of a work only if that plaintiff can convince a jury that there was “a causal relationship between the infringement and the profits generated indirectly from the infringement.” The artists met that burden here. Indeed, the court noted, their primary damages expert testified that he calculated damages based on four distinct revenue streams: (1) sales of tickets to the listening party; (2) Apple’s payment to livestream the party; (3) merchandise Ye and his co-defendants sold at the party, and (4) sales of the “Yeezy x GAP jacket” that Ye first wore and publicized at the party. Nor did it matter that the expert did not cite “consumer surveys, experiments, and focus groups,” the court found. All that a plaintiff must do is provide “initial evidence of gross revenue duly apportioned to relate to the infringement,” the court found. “Courts similarly situated have deemed evidence like [the artists’] to be sufficient for proving copyright damages.”

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

Judge: Court, M.

Attorneys: Eric J. Fues (Finnegan Henderson Farabow Garrett & Dunner LLP) for Artist Revenue Advocates, LLC. Christopher Rosario (Martorell Law APC) for Kanye Omari West.

Companies: Artist Revenue Advocates, LLC

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