Songwriters Clear Avril Lavigne of Plagiarism Charges

The two songwriters who had originally implied that Avril Lavigne might have illegally copied their songs are now changing their tune. I couldn't resist - that pun was totally intended by the way. Last year, Tony Dunbar and James Gangwer filed a lawsuit claiming that Avril's song "Girlfriend," was stolen from their song "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend".

On Tuesday, the writers came out with a statement saying that they were exonerating Avril and her co-writer Luke from the original charges. "We are satisfied that any similarities between the two songs resulted from Avril and Luke's use of certain common and widely used lyrics. We therefore completely exonerate Avril and Luke from any wrongdoing of any kind in connection with the claims made by us in our lawsuit."

Recent reports claimed that Avril and the songwriters had reached a confidential settlement in the case. I find it interesting that Avril would even feel the need to settle when she vehemently denied doing anything wrong. I wonder how much it cost her to make this little problem disappear.

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