John Cena, WWE Sued Over Horn Sample in Entrance Theme

A federal lawsuit filed this week in the Southern District of New York accuses wrestler and actor John Cena, World Wrestling Entertainment, TKO Group Holdings, and several others of copyright infringement over the use of a musical sample in Cena's longtime entrance theme, "The Time Is Now." The complaint, brought by Kim Schofield, seeks to void a prior settlement and demands damages exceeding $150,000, alleging unauthorized sampling of horn arrangements from a 1974 recording by her late father, Canadian bandleader Pete Schofield.

The suit centers on the track's distinctive brass intro and outro, which Schofield claims her father originally composed for his instrumental cover of "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia," a song written by Bobby Russell. According to the 32-page complaint, producer Jacob Brian Dutton, known professionally as Jake One, looped and sampled those horn sections in 2003 to create the beat for "The Time Is Now," which debuted in WWE in 2005 and became synonymous with Cena's career. Schofield alleges the elements were distinct from Russell's original composition and unrelated to other covers by artists such as Vicki Lawrence or Reba McEntire. She...