Musical Litigation Groove
Musical Litigation Groove – The LAW FIRM OF DAYREL SEWELL, PLLC is pleased to announce that Messrs. Sewell’s and Ng’s recent, featured publication, “Pharell Williams and Robin Thicke told they “Got To Give It Up””, appears in this month’s IPFrontline newsletter. In March 2015, a federal jury in Los Angeles ordered Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams, singers of the hit song “Blurred Lines,” to pay over $7 million in damages and earned profits to the family of Marvin Gaye, singer of the chart-topping 1977 song “Got To Give It Up,” after determining that the two were guilty of copyright infringement. See Pharrell Williams, et al. v. Bridgeport Music, Inc., et al., 2015 WL 1476803 (C.D. Cal. Mar. 10, 2015). The verdict adds increasing uncertainty for the music industry with the finding of substantial similarity between the two songs, and hence copyright infringement, but its ramifications may have also spawned a shift in copyright infringement litigation that puts musicians and record labels on alert. The test for copyright infringement relied on whether a reasonable and average lay observer would recognize an alleged infringing piece of work as having been appropriated from a copyrighted work. The jury had to decide whether the two songs were similar enough in any way to establish some evidence of copying. The jury was not to give any weight to the amount of elements that were dissimilar or those dissimilar elements themselves. This particular instruction proves challenging in that it is a perspicacious analysis to accurately explain to jurors and just as difficult, if not harder, for jurors to properly apply. The music industry argues that this current test severely limits and restricts an artist’s ability to create music. In this particular case, the jury relied heavily on the composition of the sheet music in reaching a decision of infringement. From the sheet music, along with conflicting testimonies on the similarities and differences of the two songs, the jury concluded that the two songs were sufficiently similar. However, what the jury precisely found to be similar remains unknown. There are many elements in all music that are not embodied by the sheet music, including tone, mood, style, and feel, yet play an integral part in forming the identity of the song. These elements simply cannot be seen on a piece of paper. These essential aspects of a song help to create expressive, original works, but at times are non-dispositive in such analyses for copyright infringement. You are encouraged to comment and receive free updates by subscribing to the firm’s Blog and Press Release sections.
Robin Thicke Pharrell Williams Pay 5 million marvin Gaye Estate News
When compared to the Copyright Act of 1909, the Copyright Act of 1976 affords triers of fact a broader spectrum of considerations when assessing whether one song violates the copyright protections of another. This is because the Copyright Act of 1909 restricted those assessments to a song’s sheet music, excluding from consideration various musical qualities that are not conveyed by sheet music. As the firm’s article aptly noted, a song’s “tone, mood, style, and feel” cannot be understood from sheet music alone, and thus could not be considered by juries deciding copyright cases under the 1909 Act. The Copyright Act… Read more »
From this article, it seems clear that a different analysis would have applied to this case vis-à-vis the Copyright Act of 1909. Solely, from a musical perspective, every time I hear a new song, it sounds like I’m hearing a re-fashioned song from 20 years ago. There are only so many sequences, tempos, and chords by which to compose a song. Because the song was copyrighted before the passing of the Copyright act of 1976, it was governed by the 1909 Act, which states, in part, that because the sheet music of the song is a printed record in eligible… Read more »
The write-up on the copyright dispute between the Marvin Gaye estate against Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams does a good job of highlighting the impact that case will have on future disputes involving allegations of copyright abuse in music. The case was decided on the district level and is unlikely to be appealed, meaning that the precedent it sets is binding only in Nashville. While Nashville is home to many great artists, two major regions of the music-producing United States, California and New York, remain unaffected. Still, even without being binding in those jurisdictions, this case has set a standard… Read more »
In March of 2018, the final judgment for the Blurred Lines case was given by the Ninth Circuit, affirming the verdict that Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams copied Marvin Gaye’s hit song “Got to Give it Up.” The five-year legal battle that gave Gaye the right to copyright a “groove” has, as predicted, sparked more copyright cases in the music industry with the issue of whether a song’s feel, groove, or aesthetic has been copied. For example, one Grammy-award winning artist who is currently facing major lawsuits (due in large part to this decision) is Ed Sheeran. A recent suit… Read more »