Bollywood music composer Bappi Lahiri has won a lawsuit seeking to halt sales of the hip-hop hit Addictive, which carried parts of a number he composed.
The song, which appears in the album Truthfully Speaking by Truth Hurts, borrowed a catchy vocal line from the Hindi song Thoda Resham Lagta Hai, sung by Lata Mangeshkar, without credit or royalties.
The CD went on to become enormously popular last summer selling 600,000 copies between June, when it was released, and October, when Lahiri filed the suit.
A Los Angeles federal judge barred further sales of the CD unless and until Lahiri was listed on the song's credits.
Lahiri's lawsuit, filed in a federal court, accused the album's producer Dr Dre, whose real name is Andre Young, of 'borrowing heavily' from his song.
Accusing Dre of 'cultural imperialism', Lahiri said the producer had engineered an international hit without paying royalties or giving any credit to the original artists. It sought a halt to sales of the CD.
Also named in the suit was Dre's label Aftermath, its parent company Interscope Records and Universal Music, part of the French-American Vivendi Universal group.
The song, with lyrics by Anand Bakshi, appeared in the Hindi movie Jyoti, which starred Jeetendra and Hema Malini.
Lahiri is credited as the music composer and producer of the music in the movie, including the song parts of which appear in Addictive.
Most observers in the music business find it ironic that Lahiri, well-known for lifting music from hit songs from all over the world, has now taken an American producer to court for exactly the same deed.
