Last year, Jay Z was sued by Chauncey Mahan, an engineer who worked on a series of songs with the rapper between 1998 to 2002. The lawsuit claimed co-ownership of 45 songs, including “Big Pimpin”. Jay Z’s lawyers argued that the suit should be dismissed since it came too late. The Hollywood Reporter notes that the judge agreed, determining that Mahan waited too long to sue.

Jay’s lawyers previously claimed that Mahan’s “claims are plainly barred by the three-year statute of limitations contained in the Copyright Act, and have been for more than a decade.” U.S. District Court Judge Lorna Schofield agreed, saying Mahan was time-barred from pursuing his claim. She gave three reasons why Mahan should’ve known to sue earlier: Roc-A-Fella copyright registrations, liner notes, and the absence of royalty payments.

Mahan argued that he wouldn’t have any reason to know that he would be owed royalties. “Considering the depth of plaintiff’s experience in the music industry and the substantial commercial success of the albums, this assertion strains credulity,” the judge wrote.

Jay Z and Mahan were previously involved in an alleged extortion plot concerning master recordings that Jay Z’s camp assumed went missing in 2002. Mahan claimed that Jay and his crew stole those masters, outtakes, and other unpublished materials. The judge wrote that Rock-A-Fella was correct in asserting “that it owns the copyrights to the unpublished works as ‘derivative’ or ‘underlying’ parts of the Albums”. [Pitchfork]