Bad Bunny Loses Bid to Recover Nearly $500,000 in Legal Fees From Copyright Case
Bad Bunny will not be reimbursed nearly $500,000 in legal fees he spent defeating a copyright lawsuit over an allegedly uncleared sample on his album Un Verano Sin Ti, a U.S. federal judge ruled on 20 August 2026.
U.S. District Judge Otis D. Wright II decided that Empawa Africa, the plaintiff, had filed an "objectively reasonable" lawsuit that might have succeeded had it continued to litigate, and found no evidence of any "ulterior motive," according to Billboard.
The underlying case centred on the song "Enséñame a Bailar" from Un Verano Sin Ti, Bad Bunny's 2022 album that spent 13 weeks at number one on the Billboard 200 — the chart that tracks the most-consumed albums in the United States — and has logged more than 150 weeks on that tally. Empawa Africa, a music company, claimed the track included an uncleared sample of "Empty My Pocket," a 2019 song by Nigerian artist Dera, whose legal name is Ezeani Godfrey.
Bad Bunny's legal team had demanded that Empawa reimburse $465,612 in attorney's fees racked up fighting the case. His lawyers called the lawsuit "meritless from the beginning" and argued it was aimed at generating "bad publicity" to pressure a payout.
Judge Wright disagreed. He noted that Bad Bunny did use the sample of "Empty My Pocket" and that his lawyers refused to provide Empawa with proof he had secured a licence for it. "The court cannot fault Empawa for declining to trust defendants counsels' word," Wright wrote.
Imposing attorneys' fees in the case, the judge continued, "would send the wrong message to parties seeking to protect their intellectual property by testing meritorious claims in open court." In the U.S. legal system, each side typically bears its own legal costs unless a court finds a lawsuit was brought in bad faith or was objectively unreasonable — a standard designed to keep the courthouse doors open for genuine disputes.
Empawa's attorney, Ed McPherson, said he was "extremely pleased" with the ruling and agreed that forcing fees on the plaintiff would chill copyright enforcement.
Bad Bunny, whose legal name is Benito Martínez Ocasio, was the defendants' lead alongside others named in the original suit. The copyright claim itself was resolved in his favour — the fee dispute was a separate question about whether Empawa should pay for the cost of defending it.
The ruling closes a chapter that began with a cross-continental sample dispute: a Puerto Rican megastar's blockbuster album, a Nigerian label's catalogue, and the question of whether a sample was cleared before the record reached millions of listeners. The judge's answer to the fee question is that asking was fair.
