Lil’ Flip Sued For Copyright Infringement – Again

Lil’ Flip has been hit with a second copyright infringement lawsuit, this time due to alleged unauthorized use of three melodies on his major label debut, Undaground Legend. The latest round of legal wrangling for the Houston, Texas rapper stems from three songs on the CD, “Texas Boys,” “Make Mama Proud” and “What I Been […]

Lil’ Flip has been hit with a second copyright infringement

lawsuit, this time due to alleged unauthorized use of three melodies on his

major label debut, Undaground Legend.

The latest round

of legal wrangling for the Houston, Texas rapper stems from three songs on the

CD, “Texas Boys,” “Make Mama Proud” and “What

I Been Through.”

The lawsuit, filed

in Federal Court in the Southern District of Texas, claims the melodies were

the creation of Tommy L. Granville, a songwriter and music producer based out

of Shreveport, Louisiana.

In addition to

Lil’ Flip, Suckafree Records, Estelle Douglass Hobbs, Sony Music, Columbia,

Loud Records, Lucky Publishing and Hobbs Publishing are all named as defendants

in the lawsuit.

The lawsuit seeks

$1.5 million in damages and an unspecified amount for alleged willful infringement

of Granville’s copyrights.

Undaground

Legend

has moved over a million copies since it was released in 2002. Lil

Flip’s song “Sunshine” from his album U Gotta Feel Me,

is currently number 43 on Billboard’s Top 100 Singles chart.

Lil’ Flip also

recently release another mixtape, "Houston We Have a Problem," with

DJ Smallz.

In September 2004,

NamCo America filed a $10 million dollar lawsuit against Lil’ Flip and

Sony, alleging the rapper illegally used copyrighted sounds from the classic

video games “Pac-Man” and “Ms. Pac-Man.”

Also in September

2004, The US 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that ruled that all samples

must be licensed, citing rules established under the Digital Millennium Copyright

Act of 1998.

"If you cannot

pirate the whole sound recording, can you ‘lift’ or ‘sample’ something less

than the whole? Our answer to that question is in the negative," the ruling

stated. “Get a license or do not sample.”

Critics and musicians,

especially rappers, have often argued fair use, or that the pieces were so small

and transformed that the original sample did not need to be cleared.