Yoko Ono has dropped her lawsuit against the makers of 'Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed', a pro-Creationism film which used a 15 second snippet of John Lennon's 'Imagine' without permission.
As previously reported, Premise Media won the original court case after arguing that their use of the song was allowed under the fair use doctrine of US copyright law, because they used the line "nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too" as a way of criticising the viewpoint that the world is better off without religion.
Ono vowed to appeal the ruling, backed by EMI; while she battled through federal courts, the record label went to state court. However, a statement by Stanford Law School's Fair Use Projects, which has been representing Premise Media, on Tuesday revealed that the case has now been dropped.
Stanford law professor and lead counsel for Premise said: "We think it was clear from the beginning that our clients had every right to use the 'Imagine' clip as they did, and we're happy we've vindicated that right".
However, he did add later in a post on his blog that the song clip won't appear in the film's DVD release. He wrote: "The mere tendency of these cases caused the film's DVD distributor to shy away from releasing the full film - the version that includes the 'Imagine' segment".