Olivia Dean is facing a copyright infringement lawsuit over her song I’ve Seen It, the closing track from her 2025 breakout album The Art of Loving, which Bill Withers’s music publisher claims unlawfully copies his 1981 R&B classic Just the Two of Us.
Mattie Music Group, operating as Bleunig Music, filed the lawsuit Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California against Universal Music Group, Capitol Records, Sony Music Publishing and Kobalt Music Publishing, alleging the similarities between the two songs are “obvious and inescapable.”
According to the complaint, Dean’s track “copied in large and significant part” the “distinctively protectable melody” of Withers’s song, which he co-wrote with Ralph MacDonald and William Salter while under contract with Bleunig.
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The filing states that a musicologist hired by the publisher concluded the two works share substantial similarities in protectable musical expression, with Dean’s song repeatedly reproducing the earlier track’s melodic structure.
Bleunig says it sent cease-and-desist letters to all four named defendants in August after completing its musicological analysis, but that the parties “continued reproducing, distributing, licensing, publicly performing, and commercially exploiting” Dean’s song regardless.
Notably, Dean herself and her co-writers, Bastian Langebaek and Max Wolfgang, are not named as defendants in the suit, though the complaint does allege the trio “had a reasonable opportunity to encounter” Withers’s song before writing I’ve Seen It.
Bleunig is seeking a permanent injunction barring further use of the track, damages equal to its own losses plus the defendants’ profits tied to the alleged infringement, attorneys’ fees and costs, and a court order mandating the seizure and destruction of all existing copies of the song.
Just the Two of Us, originally released as a Grover Washington Jr. single featuring Withers on vocals, reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and won the Grammy for Best R&B Song in 1982.
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2026-10-03 04:11:00
