Usher & Justin Bieber Get Slapped with Lawsuit

By: Taren Vaughan

Usher and Justin Bieber sued for allegedly copyrighting song? Justin Bieber became a teenage singing sensation in no time thanks to Usher Raymond, who is credited with putting the young star on the map, along with talent manager Scooter Braun. Yet while Justin Bieber is busy stealing the hearts of young girls all over and Usher is enjoying his new gig with music competition show ‘The Voice’, despite one crazy moment with a fan, Usher and Justin are on the verge of possibly having to cough up millions of dollars if artist De Rico has anything to do with it. Devin Copeland, who goes by the stage name of ‘De Rico’, has filed a lawsuit against Usher and Justin Bieber over his song “Somebody to Love”, De Rico accusing the artists of  copyright infringement and is looking to get $10 million from Usher and Justin.

Here’s the report from E!:

Devin Copeland (who performs as De Rico) is claiming in a $10 million copyright infringement lawsuit that alleges he showed Usher a tune of the same name and the R&B star usurped it for Bieber’s My World 2.0.

Copeland, who is suing along with his writing partner Mareio Overton, alleges that his album 2008 My Story II contained “Somebody to Love” and he and Overton applied for and were granted the copyright.

In the lawsuit that De Rico filed on Thursday in U.S. District Court in Virginia, he stated that he met with scouts from several big time labels that included Island, Sony and RCA who then brought My Story II to various artists, Usher being one of those artists.

The suit itself stated:

“Without any authority or consent, [Manager Jonetta Patton] and Usher conspired with songwriters and producers…to directly copy Plaintiffs’ song ‘Somebody to Love,’ intending to appropriate Plaintiffs’ intellectual property as their own.”