Back in July 2014, Katy Perry was sued by a rapper named Marcus Gray, who alleged that the pop singer copied his song “Joyful Noise” in her 2013 hit “Dark Horse.” Jurors initially sided with Gray, who performs under the name Flame, but in 2020 a judge overturned the verdict (citing the monumental “Stairway To Heaven” copyright ruling), maintaining that Perry’s “ostinato” (a short series of notes repeated through a song) was too simple justify copyright protection. Now, a federal appeals court has refused to reinstate the 2.8 million verdict against Perry, deciding that the two tracks only share basic “building blocks.”

“The portion of the ‘Joyful Noise’ ostinato that overlaps with the ‘Dark Horse’ ostinato consists of a manifestly conventional arrangement of musical building blocks,” the appeals court wrote, voting 3-to-0. “Allowing a copyright over this material would essentially amount to allowing an improper monopoly over two-note pitch sequences or even the minor scale itself.”

“Just as films often rely on tropes to tell a compelling story, music uses standard tools to build and resolve dramatic tension,” the court added. In plain English, the notes Perry used on “Dark Horse” are too commonplace to be copyrighted.