That Time Jon Bon Jovi Was Sued for $400 Billion

Copyright settlements have long been present in the music business. From time to time, a musician falls victim to the hands of people who want to earn a big, fat check in a short amount of time.

That’s not to say that the allegations are all false; in some cases, some of them would turn out to be true, like George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” incident, which not only cost him a large sum of money but his career was almost ruined to pieces. Ed Sheeran, who spent some time in court as he was accused of plagiarizing Same Switch’s “Oh Why” with his song, “Shape of You” has had some words to say regarding the incident. “It’s damaging to the songwriting industry,” Sheeran said. “There’s only so many notes and very few chords used in pop music. Coincidence is bound to happen if 60,000 songs are being released every day on Spotify. That’s 22 million songs a year and there are only 12 notes that are available.” Sheeran was proven innocent of the matter.

But for this part, we’ll discuss that one time someone sued Jon Bon Jovi for a ridiculous amount of $400 Billion in 2008 Chelsea City Council frontman, Samuel Steel.

During this time, Steele asserted that the song “I Love This Town” by Bon Jovi was plagiarized from his work titled “Man I Love This Team.” Following the decision by TBS to use Bon Jovi’s song as the theme tune for their telecast of the Major League Baseball playoffs on television, Steele decided to file the lawsuit.

However, the case was dismissed by Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton of the United States District Court, which resulted in Steele losing his precious amount of money. In addition, attorneys working on behalf of Bon Jovi stated in front of Judge Gorton that “online databases reveal nearly 100 songs that use the phrase ‘I love this in some form in their title,” leaving Steel’s claim as completely baseless and inappropriate.

Stories like these could merely give you an idea of how tough it is to become a musician, especially in this digitally-phased era where we can access information with just a few clicks.