In September 2025, the companies Spotify AB and Spotify USA, Inc. (together, Spotify) sent a takedown notice under the US copyright legislation, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), to ReVanced. ReVanced is an open source, community driven project that has offered a variety of features and customisations for third party Android applications, including Spotify, YouTube, Reddit and Instagram.

The takedown notice was in relation to ReVanced’s ‘Unlock Premium’ patch. This patch was available to download through the AI-powered developer platform, GitHub, and allowed users of Android applications to bypass the Spotify Premium paywall and access some of the premium features without paying. Spotify’s premium features include ad-free music, offline downloads, higher quality audio and unlimited skips.

Spotify’s takedown notice was issued on the basis that the patch infringes the copyright in the code of Spotify’s desktop and mobile application software and circumvents their technological protection measures (including encryption and transfer key protocols). The notice, which has been published by ReVanced on its website, identifies the patch files provided by ReVanced which are allegedly derived from unauthorised copies of Spotify’s copyright works.

At present, ReVanced appears to be taking steps to comply with the notice and has since taken down its Unlock Premium patch files. However, ReVanced disagrees that they copied Spotify’s code in making the patch. ReVanced maintains that the songs on Spotify Free remain accessible without the patch and that the premium features unlocked by the patch mainly affect convenience (e.g. the song skipping feature) and do not allow downloads. ReVanced asserts that their patch’s main function is to make the Spotify app usable when modified by a user, since Spotify does not have the required ‘attestation’ (i.e. a security process which verifies that an app is genuine, unmodified and running on a secure device) to prevent patched versions from running.

A key question in this dispute is whether the patch is a violation of the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provision (section 1201). This prohibits the unauthorised circumventing of technological measures that copyright owners use to control access to their works. As acknowledged by ReVanced in their public announcement on the dispute, American cases such as 321 Studios v MGM¹ and MDY v Blizzard² have demonstrated that there are instances where a court will determine that mechanisms which bypass software restrictions are a circumvention of a copyright owner’s technological measures.

ReVanced has been sent numerous DMCA notices previously, including from Google for its YouTube Premium patch named ‘Vanced’, but has kept most of its popular patches available despite these. However, the recent notice from Spotify appears to have caused a shift in ReVanced’s attitude. As posted on its social media profiles and website, ReVanced is openly seeking legal advice.

It will be worth observing how this dispute evolves in the coming months, and whether ReVanced opts to reinstate its Unlock Premium patch. This dispute raises questions about the extent to which software developers can create products that modify the functionality of third party apps, without infringing any copyright.

This article was written by Jennifer Huby, Partner and Kirsten Schreuder, Solicitor.

¹ 321 Studios v. Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studios, Inc., 307 F. Supp. 2d 1085 (N.D. Cal. 2004).
² MDY Industries, LLC v. Blizzard Entertainment, Inc and Vivendi Games, Inc., 629 F.3d 928 (9th Cir. 2010).