Hip-Hop mogul Jay Z has been in a long running litigation with Osama Ahmed Fahmy since 2007.
During the release of Jay Z's 4th albumVol 3...Life And Times of S. Carter, the track made use of a Middle Eastern sounding flute for its intro which duels with the beat throughout the song.
It turned out that it was actually a composition by Baligh Hamdy for an Egyptian movie in 1957. Timabaland, the song's producer claims that he found the piece without any identification on a CD, so thought it was in a public domain.
In 2001 the rapper right away paid $100,00 to the label EMI Arabia, who claimed rights over Khosara, Khosara, just so to hush the controversy. The label shared the payout to Hamdy's descendants as he passed away in 1993.
Osama Ahmed Fahmy is the composer's nephew and heir who filed the lawsuit in the US in 2007, saying the deal is irrelevant under the Egyptian Law. He is seeking a bigger payout from JayZ and Timbaland, after his lawyers bring in experts to evaluate's Big Pimpin' s impact on Jay Z's net worth. This argument was dismissed as irrelevant by the rapper's representatives.
A court motion by the defense said: 'The notion that people buy concert tickets to hear one song, never mind an instrumental sample contained in one song that may or may not be performed at any given concert, is beyond speculative - it is farcical.'
Shawn Carter, or JayZ and his wife Beyonce are said to have an estimated net worth of $1B, and he doesn't want the jury in the upcoming lawsuit trial to know how much he's got nor his previous criminal record.
According to TMZ, he's filed documents asking the judge to preclude the information from the breach of copyright hearing.
If the two cannot come into an agreement, the trial will be set later in the year.
