Diddy Sentencing, Taylor Swift Dismissal, Wu-Tang Case, Nirvana Ruling & More Top Music Law News

THE BIG STORY: Sean “Diddy” Combs fundamentally won his transgression case, right? After all, the assemblage acquitted him connected the cardinal racketeering and sex-trafficking charges that could person sent him to situation for life. The feds overreached and the assemblage slapped them down, the communicative goes — let’s get those White Parties going again.

But the prima was convicted, albeit connected lesser charges of interstate prostitution. And these weren’t misdemeanors: Prosecutors privation astatine slightest 11 years successful prison, and the probation bureau says helium deserves 7 years. Combs’ lawyers, connected the different hand, privation conscionable 14 months — a condemnation that would nonstop him location astir instantly connected clip served.

When Combs is sentenced by a national justice connected Friday (Oct. 3), however overmuch clip volition helium really get? Legal experts told maine that it volition mostly beryllium connected 1 tricky question: How overmuch the justice separates the “acquitted conduct” that was rejected by the assemblage from the actions connected which Combs was really convicted.

That mightiness look similar communal sense, but it’s really a arguable contented and the cardinal quality betwixt Combs and prosecutors up of sentencing. Experts accidental it’s besides a superior situation for a national judge: “It volition beryllium hard for the justice to unhear everything helium has already heard astir Combs,” 1 erstwhile longtime Manhattan national authoritative told me.

For more, spell work my full communicative here. And enactment tuned astatine Billboard — we’ll support you updated erstwhile the condemnation is issued.

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Other apical stories this week…

NO NEW TRIAL – Separately successful the Diddy case, Judge Arun Subramanian denied a motion seeking to overturn his prostitution convictions, clearing the mode for some sentencing and appeals. The ruling rejected Combs’ assorted arguments, including his eyebrow-raising assertion that the “freak-off” enactment parties astatine the bosom of the lawsuit were conscionable porn movie shoots protected by the First Amendment. “Illegal enactment can’t beryllium laundered into constitutionally protected enactment conscionable by the tendency to ticker it,” the justice wrote.

GET A GOOD LAWYER – A national justice dismissed a lawsuit claiming Taylor Swift stole lyrics for 15 of her songs from a self-published Florida poet, ruling that accuser Kimberly Marasco was trying to assertion ownership implicit “common words” and basal ideas: “Plaintiff’s poems magnitude astatine astir to ideas, metaphors, contexts, and themes — nary of which is simply a due taxable of copyright protection,” the justice wrote.

PROTECT YA SECRETS – A national justice said that Martin Shkreli must look a lawsuit implicit Once Upon a Time successful Shaolin, a one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan medium that helium erstwhile owned. The justice refused to disregard the lawsuit due to the fact that she said the ultra-rare medium mightiness beryllium considered a “trade secret” — and that Shkreli perchance broke the instrumentality by retaining copies aft helium forfeited it to prosecutors. But she acknowledged that specified a ruling was “uncharted territory” for commercialized secrets law.

NIRVANA COVER CASE – The iconic grunge set won a tribunal ruling dismissing a long-running suit filed by Spencer Elden, the antheral who appeared arsenic a nude babe connected the iconic screen of Nirvana’s 1991 medium Nevermind. Elden claimed the representation amounted to kid pornography, but the justice ruled it was not the benignant of sexualized photograph that would interruption the law: “This representation … is astir analogous to a household photograph of a nude kid bathing.”

KIM K SUES RAY J – Kim Kardashian and Kris Jenner filed a defamation lawsuit against Ray J implicit allegations that helium falsely claimed during a podcast that national authorities are investigating the parent and da...