Mattie Music Group, the publisher behind Bill Withers' catalog, filed a federal copyright complaint accusing Olivia Dean's song “I've Seen It” of lifting the melody from Withers' 1981 classic “Just the Two of Us.” The seven-page complaint targets Capitol Records, Universal Music Group, Sony Music Publishing and Kobalt Music Publishing America, but notably leaves Dean and her co-writers off the list of defendants.
According to Music Business Worldwide, the complaint was filed Thursday in federal court in Los Angeles. The case is formally docketed as Mattie Music Grp. v. Capitol Recs. LLC in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, per Bloomberg Law, which lists the case number as 2:26-cv-11383. Doing business as Bleunig Music, the publisher operates under the Mattie Music Group name and alleges that the companies continued reproducing, distributing, licensing, publicly performing and commercially exploiting the song after being warned.
“I've Seen It” closes out Dean's sophomore album, “The Art of Loving,” which Capitol released in September 2025, as the Los Angeles Times reports. The 27-year-old British singer co-wrote the track with Bastian Langebæk and Max Wolfgang, and she's best known for breakout hits “Man I Need” and “So Easy (To Fall in Love).” Dean is also a reigning Grammy winner, having taken home Best New Artist honors in February, and her album has become a genuine commercial success — reaching No. 3 in the U.S. and No. 1 in the U.K., where it was named album of the year at the Brit Awards, according to the BBC.
A Musicologist's Findings Anchor the Complaint
Mattie Music Group enlisted musicologist Alexander Stewart to compare the two songs, and he concluded the works contain substantial similarities in protectable musical expression, including what the complaint describes as repeated copying of the melody from “Just the Two of Us,” the BBC reported. The complaint goes further, alleging the two songs share musical features so striking they could not have arisen by coincidence alone.
The publisher also alleges Dean and her collaborators had a reasonable opportunity to encounter “Just the Two of Us” before writing “I've Seen It” — a song that has racked up roughly 246 million Spotify streams compared with the original's 948 million plays, per the same BBC report. A separate mashup comparison highlighted by Boing Boing pointed to two bars that musician David Bennett described as having a nearly identical melody.
Notice Was Sent in August, Suit Says
The publisher says it sent written notice to each defendant on or about Aug. 17, flagging the alleged similarities well before filing suit. Despite that notice, the complaint alleges, Capitol, UMG, Sony and Kobalt continued reproducing, distributing, licensing, publicly performing and commercially exploiting the song, according to NBC News. The publisher characterizes that continued exploitation as willful infringement.
Dean is not named as a defendant, and the lawsuit does not seek damages from her or her co-writers, NBC News noted. The suit instead takes aim squarely at the corporate machinery behind the record — Universal Music Group, which owns Capitol Records, along with Sony Music Publishing and Kobalt Music Publishing America.
What Mattie Music Group Is Seeking
The complaint seeks unspecified damages, including the defendants' profits, attorneys' fees and statutory damages, plus a permanent injunction against further infringement. Statutory damages under federal copyright law can reach up to $150,000 per work if the infringement is found to be willful, Music Business Worldwide reported. Under Chapter 5 of Title 17 of the U.S. Code, infringement claims like this one draw on remedies spanning injunctions, impounding of infringing material, and damages or profits, according to the U.S. Code.
“Just the Two of Us” was co-written by Withers, Ralph MacDonald and William Salter, with a version featuring jazz saxophonist Grover Washington Jr. and Withers on lead vocals released as a single in February 1981 off the “Winelight” album. The song reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and won a Grammy for Best R&B Song, per NBC Los Angeles. Withers died of heart complications in March 2020 at age 81.
This isn't Mattie Music Group's first high-profile infringement fight tied to Withers' music. The publisher previously brought legal action against Kendrick Lamar in 2016 over alleged copying of a Bill Withers song, a case that ultimately ended in a settlement, according to Music Business Worldwide. The dispute also arrives amid a broader stretch of melody-copying litigation in pop music; in June 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal in a long-running case alleging Ed Sheeran's “Thinking Out Loud” copied Marvin Gaye's “Let's Get It On.”
Dean, for her part, remains on the road for her Art of Loving tour, with Rolling Stone noting she went on to win Best New Artist at the 2026 Grammys after the album's release. Whether this new legal challenge affects the album's commercial momentum remains to be seen, as no court ruling on the infringement allegations has been issued.
