Miley Cyrus Moves to Dismiss "Flowers" Infringement Suit

Lawyers for Miley Cyrus officially filed a motion, seeking the dismissal of the ongoing infringement lawsuit over her 2023 global hit "Flowers," Music Business Worldwide reported. The suit, originally filed in September 2024 by Tempo Secured Music Rights Collateral, LLC, alleges that Cyrus and her co-writers lifted protected elements from Bruno Mars’ 2013 ballad "When I Was Your Man." While the two songs have long been compared by fans as thematic opposites, Cyrus’s legal team argues that the similarities identified by the plaintiffs are merely "commonplace" musical building blocks that are ineligible for copyright protection.

The core of the defense rests on a technical distinction between an abstract pitch sequence and a protectable melody. Cyrus’s lawyers contend that Tempo’s musicologist, Anthony Ricigliano, failed to "filter out" unprotectable elements before drawing his conclusions. Specifically, the defense argues that while a specific eight-note melody can be copyrighted, the underlying sequence of pitches—tones without regard to rhythm or duration—cannot. By admitting that the two songs share no identical melodies, the defense claims the plaintiff’s case is "fatally defective" under the extrinsic test of copyright law.

The "Prior Art" and Breakup Tropes

The motion further dismantles the plaintiff’s claims regarding lyrical similarities. Tempo’s report, provided by novelist Jeff Rovin, suggested that the songs shared characters, plot, and "sequence of events." However, Cyrus’s team hit back by labeling these as "commonplace tropes" of the breakup genre. They pointed to Justin Bieber’s 2011 track "That Should Be Me" as prior art that utilizes the same imagery of flowers, hand-holding, and talking for hours.

"No one owns these words, which are commonplace tropes in breakup songs... all of the lyrics Plaintiff relies upon flow naturally from the fact both are breakup songs." - Miley Cyrus’ Legal Team

A Transformative Defense

In a secondary "Fair Use" argument, the defense posits that even if similarities were found, "Flowers" serves as a transformative commentary on Mars’s original work. By flipping the male narrator’s regret ("I should have bought you flowers") into a message of female self-reliance ("I can buy myself flowers"), the song provides a new meaning and message. Furthermore, the defense cited a 20% surge in streaming for the Bruno Mars track following the release of "Flowers" as evidence that the newer song caused no market harm—but rather provided a "halo effect" for the decade-old ballad.

The motion is currently scheduled for a hearing on May 5, 2026, before Judge Mónica Ramírez Almadani. With "Flowers" standing as the biggest-selling global single of 2023 according to the IFPI, the stakes for Sony Music and the song's publishers could not be higher. If the court agrees with Cyrus, it would reinforce the legal boundary that "inspired by" does not equal "stolen from."