As Bad Bunny polishes his Grammys and preps for the Super Bowl Halftime Show, he and dozens of other stars are still facing an unprecedented lawsuit – one that claims a key element of nearly every reggaeton track was essentially stolen from a single 1989 song.

The huge copyright case, filed by Cleveland “Clevie” Browne and the heirs of Wycliffe “Steely” Johnson, claims their 1989 song “Fish Market” is the source of the “dem bow rhythm” — the boom-ch-boom-chick percussion that’s a hallmark of reggaeton.

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Based on that claim, Steely & Clevie are suing more than 150 artists, including Bad Bunny, Karol G, Pitbull, Drake, Daddy Yankee and Luis Fonsi, plus units of all three major music companies. They claim that more than 1,800 different songs featuring dem bow were illegally copied from “Fish Market,” and they could seek hundreds of millions in damages.

As music law experts previously told Billboard, the Steely & Clevie lawsuit could have an immensely disruptive impact on reggaeton — a booming genre that has risen alongside Bad Bunny from the clubs of Puerto Rico to the very top of the global music business.

“This case is jaw-dropping — the plaintiffs are suing over a hundred artists for over a thousand songs, 30 years after the release of their song,” Jennifer Jenkins, a Duke University law professor, told Billboard at the time. “If they win, this would confer a monopoly over an entire genre, something unprecedented in music copyright litigation.” For more details on the case, go read Billboard’s deep-dive here.

In seeking to defeat the lawsuit, attorneys for Bad Bunny and the other artists have echoed that exact point. In one filing, the star’s lawyers said the case “seeks to monopolize practically the entire reggaetón musical genre” by claiming control over basic musical elements that aren’t supposed to be protected by copyright law.

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In 2024, a judge ruled that it was too early to decide those complex issues, allowing the case to move ahead. But now, after two years of litigation and discovery, the massive lawsuit has reached its make-or-break moment, as attorneys for the artists have asked for “summary judgment” – urging the judge to decide the entire dispute without sending it to trial.

In doing so, they say that the musical element that Steely & Clevie claim as intellectual property actually “exists in countless prior works and musical genres,” including the “centuries-old” boom-ch-boom-chick, also known as the habanera rhythm, that everyone recognizes. Unsurprisingly, attorneys for the plaintiffs beg to differ: “For decades, defendants have exploited the Dem Bow Riddim and extolled its creativity, originality, and appeal.”

Following a live hearing in federal court in December, the case is now primed for a ruling at some point in the next few months, perhaps as soon as next week. Will Bad Bunny add a legal victory to his recent Grammy wins and Super Bowl performance? Stay tuned.