The publishers of Bill Withers’ back catalogue have filed a copyright claim in California alleging that the British singer Olivia Dean’s song I’ve Seen It copies the melody of the late soul singer’s 1981 hit Just The Two of Us.

The complaint, filed yesterday by Mattie Music Group, names Dean’s record label Capitol Records, its parent company Universal Music Group and her publishing companies as defendants. It does not seek damages from Dean herself or from her co-writers, Bastian Langebæk and Max Wolfgang.

The publishing companies named include Sony Music Publishing and Kobalt, which publishes Wolfgang, according to Billboard, which first reported the lawsuit.

I’ve Seen It appears on The Art of Loving, Dean’s Brit Award-winning 2025 album. Just The Two of Us, released by Grover Washington Jr with Withers, reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100.

In legal documents seen by the BBC, Mattie Music Group, which looks after Withers’ back catalogue, alleges that the musical features the two songs have in common are “so striking” that they cannot have arisen by coincidence alone.

The publisher said it had hired a musicologist to review the two songs. He concluded “that the works contain substantial similarities”, including the “repeated copying” of the melody from Just The Two of Us, according to the documents.

The allegations have not been tested in court. Representatives for Universal Music Group, Sony and Dean did not immediately respond to Billboard’s requests for comment, and a Kobalt representative declined to comment.

Kirsten Gilbert, partner and head of brand exploitation, protection and trade mark litigation UK at the intellectual property law firm Marks & Clerk, said the case was likely to reopen the question of how far similarities between songs amount to infringement.

“Another major pop artist accused of copyright infringement of another song,” she said. “In this case an Olivia Dean song has allegedly repeatedly copied the melody from ‘Just the Two of Us’ by Bill Withers. Whether it has copied the melody or not will be a question for music specialists to determine.

“What is likely to come up again is the extent to which similarities between songs should be considered copyright infringement.”

Gilbert said the debate had been running since Ed Sheeran publicly criticised what he described as baseless claims, in circumstances where, in the singer’s words, there are “only so many notes and very few chords used in pop music…coincidences are bound to happen”.

Business Matters reported in September 2022 that Sheeran was facing a second copyright lawsuit, over his song Thinking Out Loud, six months after he was cleared of copying in a case over Shape of You.

Gilbert said the sums involved, with royalties for songs such as Dean’s potentially running into the millions, meant “it could be the case that claims are brought on the basis that a settlement will be reached as neither party actually wants to fight the matter in court”.

“Ed Sheeran took a stand and was successful in defending claims brought both in the US and UK,” she said. “It will be interesting to see how Olivia Dean’s legal team approach this claim.”

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