(October 3, 2026) Another high-profile music copyright dispute has reached the courts, this time involving one of the most recognizable songs of the past half-century.
Mattie Music Group, representing rights in the Bill Withers catalog, has filed suit in federal court in California, alleging that Grammy Award winner Olivia Dean’s 2025 song “I’ve Seen It” copies protected elements of the Withers classic “Just the Two of Us.” The latter was written by Withers, Ralph MacDonald and William Salter and became a #2 pop hit in 1981 in the recording by Grover Washington Jr. featuring Withers.
The suit names Capitol Records, Universal Music Group, Sony Publishing and Kobalt Music Publishing, but notably does not name Dean or her co-writers Bastian Langebæk and Max Wolfgang as defendants. According to the complaint, Mattie Music hired a musicologist who concluded that the two compositions contain “substantial similarities” in protected musical expression, including what the publisher says is repeated use of the distinctive melody from “Just the Two of Us.” The defendants had not publicly responded to the claims when the suit was reported.
The case brings to mind other copyright battles we’ve followed at SoulTracks. In 2015, The Gap Band received songwriting credit and royalties for Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars’ “Uptown Funk” after similarities were raised to the group’s “Oops Upside Your Head.” And, of course, one of the most consequential music copyright cases of recent years involved the family of Marvin Gaye, which prevailed in the long-running dispute over similarities between Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up” and Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams’ massive hit “Blurred Lines.”
Those cases helped intensify an ongoing debate in the music industry over where musical influence ends and copyright infringement begins. The new Withers case will now put that question before the courts once again. And all this is before we even talk about the impact of A.I. training on classic songs to create new ones.
Below is a video from music educator David Bennett that compares the two songs, so you can hear what this is all about. We’ll keep SoulTrackers posted as the case develops.
