According to Billboard, federal U.S. District judge Mark T. Pittman has ordered a popular TikTok rapper to pay over $800,000 in damages for allegedly infringing on Sony Music Group’s copyrighted material. Trefuego, legally known as Dantreal Daevon Clark-Rainbolt, was accused of using an allegedly unauthorized sample of Japanese composer Toshifumi Hinata’s 1986 song “Reflections” on his track “90mh.”
Sony claims Trefuego’s song was streamed over 100 million times on Spotify and has been featured in 155,000 videos on TikTok, which earned him nearly $700,000 in profits. The judge portioned out an additional $100,000 in licensing fees, ongoing royalties, a 50 percent publishing and 20 percent recording revenue cut to Sony. Trefuego has also been ordered to pay over $2,000 for Sony’s legal fees.
Sony reportedly took every avenue to try to locate Trefuego, having gotten the okay to forgo traditional contact methods in favor of direct messaging him via various social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Soundcloud. Judge Pittman had also claimed that Sony even sent some representatives to Trefuego’s “mother’s house on Mother’s Day in hopes that he would be there to celebrate with her.” However, he was not present at the time “and his own mother claimed she did not know who he was.”
Speaking on the final decision, Judge Pittman offered, “Sony pursued a reasonable, non-frivolous claim to vindicate infringement of its copyrighted work. Some may query the wisdom of pursuing a claim against a relatively small fish like Trefuego, but that fact does not render Sony’s motivation improper or their lawsuit unreasonable.”
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