Luigui Bleand Ordered to Pay $1.2 Million in Music Copyright Case

Musician Luigui Bleand and two affiliated companies have been ordered to pay $1.2 million after a federal court found they infringed copyrights covering 40 sound recordings and musical compositions controlled by independent Latin record labels and publishers.

U.S. District Judge Darrin P. Gayles ruled in favor of J&N Records, J&N Publishing, 829Music Mundial and Mayimba Music in the lawsuit against Bleand, whose legal name is Luis Alfredo Silverio, and his companies Harley Boys Entertainment and HBE Media Holdings. The disputed catalog includes music associated with Dominican artists Ramón Torres, Grupo Aguakate and El Chaval de la Bachata.

Gayles granted summary judgment against Bleand individually on claims of direct, contributory, and vicarious copyright infringement. He separately entered default judgment against Harley Boys and HBE after the companies failed to obtain counsel and continue participating in the litigation.

The lawsuit, filed in 2024, centered on music distributed through an agreement Bleand negotiated on behalf of Harley Boys with Warner Music Latina and ADA Latin in 2021. According to the court record, Bleand represented that Harley Boys had rights to a catalog that included works controlled by the plaintiffs.

Warner distributed tracks from the catalog to platforms including Spotify, Amazon, YouTube, and Qobuz before terminating the agreement after learning that Harley Boys did not have rights to the disputed works. The court found that Bleand later caused additional recordings controlled by 829Music to be posted on YouTube and that he and HBE supplied other disputed works to Ditto Music for distribution.

In granting summary judgment, Gayles found that the undisputed record showed Bleand knew of the plaintiffs' ownership interests, lacked permission or a license to distribute their music, and personally participated in making the works available for exploitation.

The ruling against Bleand was based on summary judgment, which allows a federal court to decide a claim without a trial when there is no genuine dispute over facts that could affect the outcome. Bleand did not timely oppose the plaintiffs' motion, and the court deemed certain factual assertions and unanswered requests for admission admitted.

The judgments against Harley Boys and HBE followed a different process. Corporations generally must be represented by attorneys in federal court, and Gayles entered defaults after the companies failed to obtain replacement counsel despite being ordered to do so.

The plaintiffs were awarded $30,000 in statutory damages for each of 40 infringed works, bringing the total to $1.2 million. Federal copyright law allows rights holders to seek statutory damages instead of proving their actual financial losses, generally ranging from $750 to $30,000 for each work.

Gayles also found that Bleand's infringement was willful and ruled that the plaintiffs were entitled to attorney's fees and costs. A finding of willful infringement can allow statutory damages of as much as $150,000 per work, although the award in this case remained at $30,000 for each of the 40 works.

The case had previously appeared headed toward a negotiated resolution. The parties reached a settlement in 2025, and the court temporarily closed the case, but the agreement later collapsed. Defense attorneys withdrew, and the litigation resumed.

Warner Music had originally been named as a defendant but reached a confidential settlement with the plaintiffs and was dismissed from the case in 2024.

Representatives for J&N, 829Music and Mayimba said after the ruling that they intend to protect their catalogs against unauthorized exploitation and described the judgment as a warning to others in the music industry.

Bleand disputed the ruling, maintaining that he obtained rights to the music through contracts and authorizations connected to artists, performers, and producers. He attributed his inability to fully defend the lawsuit to financial difficulties and said the dispute does not reflect his broader career or the documentation he says supports his ownership claims.