John Lennon’s very famous widow, Yoko Ono, and record company EMI have dropped a lawsuit against the makers of a documentary that used a part of the former Beatle’s “Imagine” without permission.

Yoko Ono was most displeased when a fragment from her beloved John Lennon’s peace anthem “Imagine” was used on the soundtrack of a documentary without having asked for permission. She sued the film’s makers, Premise Media Corp., over copyright infringement, together with EMI Group Ltd.

The plaintiffs have dropped their lawsuit, it was announced Tuesday in a news release from Stanford Law School’s Fair Use Project. You may expect the filmmakers to be pleased with this change, but it has come a bit too late, as the song can no longer be used in the documentary’s DVD release.

Anthony Falzone, Stanford law professor and lawyer for the filmmakers of “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” which focuses on intelligent design, wrote in a blog Monday that he was content with Ono and EMI’s decision to relinquish the lawsuit and that he regretted the tardiness of the move in what concerns the DVD release.

Around 15 seconds of Lennon’s “Imagine” are used in the film, including the lyrics “Nothing to kill or die for/and no religion, too,” while footage of Joseph Stalin is shown.

Falzone added in his posting that the legal broil shows “the damage that even an unproved and unsupported infringement claim can do.”

The DVD comes Oct. 21.

The documentary’s producers have admitted that they did not seek authorization to include the song in their film but argue that the shortness of the fragment used respects the fair use rules of American copyright law.

“Imagine” was included in John Lennon’s 1971 album of the same name, his second solo studio album after the Beatles disbanded in 1970.