Entertainment

Songwriters Ask Court to Drop Copyright Suit Over BTS Hit "Swim"

Kiran MachadoPublished 4m ago2 min readBased on 5 sources
Songwriters Ask Court to Drop Copyright Suit Over BTS Hit "Swim"
Photo by LG전자 This file comes from LG Electronics's official Flickr. This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing. / CC BY 2.0

Three songwriters have asked a US judge to throw out their copyright lawsuit against the makers of "Swim", the BTS song that debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Their attorneys made the request on Nov. 4, asking for the case to be dismissed in its entirety, Billboard reported.

The Hot 100 is the weekly singles chart that ranks the most popular songs in the United States. "Swim" is the lead track from the group's album ARIRANG.

The accusers are Steve Cooper, Jon Sandler and Greylyn Johnson. A copyright case is a legal claim that one piece of music copied another, and they first filed theirs in July. They argued that "Swim" had substantial similarities to an unpublished demo, an early recording a songwriter makes to pitch a song, that carries the same title.

The lawsuit targeted HYBE, the Korean entertainment company, along with its US arm HYBE America and Big Hit Music Co. It also named several songwriters behind the BTS track, including Ryan Tedder. BTS and its members were not named as defendants.

The accusers say they sent copies of their demo to various parties in March 2025 for consideration. They claim that executives at Artist Publishing Group listened to it and shared it with others, including some of the songwriters who worked on "Swim." They also say a forensic musicologist, an expert who compares the musical elements of recordings, found that the BTS version contained numerous elements unequivocally taken from their demo. These remain the accusers' claims.

HYBE's attorneys had not formally responded to the complaint before the dismissal request was filed. Billboard journalist Bill Donahue first reported the suit on July 9, 2026, under a headline that quoted the accusers' description of the alleged copying as "obvious and inescapable."

A request to dismiss is not a decision. The judge will still need to rule on whether the case goes ahead. For the writers involved, the outcome decides whether a dispute over a song's origins continues in court or ends here.

Related Articles