May 4, 2023
"I am obviously very happy with the outcome of the case. At the same time, I am unbelievably frustrated that baseless claims like this are allowed to go to court at all."
"We have spent the last eight years talking about two songs with dramatically different lyrics, melodies and four chords which are also different and used by songwriters every day, all over the world. These chords are common building blocks which were used to create music long before ‘Let’s Get It On’ was written and will be used to make music long after we are all gone. I am just a guy with a guitar who loves writing music for people to enjoy. I am not and will never allow myself to be a piggy bank for anyone to shake."
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12 comments:
"We have spent the last eight years talking about two songs ..."
Actually, the lawyers spent the last eight years talking--and they got paid for every quarter hour of it. That's a major reason why "baseless claims like this are allowed to go to court at all".
A copyright regime following a ChatNYT model of diversity of data and cache of correlations judiciously selected.
What’s going on?!?!
The estate of Marvin Gaye won a $5 million copyright infringement lawsuit that found the Pharell/Robin Thicke sone "Blurred Lines" infringed the copyright on "Got to Give It Up" primarily by copying the "feel" and "groove" of the song - the songs do not have the same melodies or harmonies (i.e., 0 identical notes), but the infringement finding was upheld by the 9th Circuit.
A comment from the previous thread that speaks to the damage the Marvin Gaye estate vultures are doing to artistic expression — fuck them all.
Don't blame plaintiffs alleging infringement for the FACT the copyright law is totally screwed up. Congress and the courts have invited this mess.
We need “loser pays.”
Roger Sweeney.... we bill in tenths of an hour now. It was a concession to the clients made in the early aughts. They were tired of paying for 15 minutes when it was just a three minute phone call.
Michael E. Lopez... thanks for the correction. I've been out of the game for a while.
I listened to the Robin Thicke track, Blurred Lines, and, boy, that's a bit tougher than the Ed Sheeran song. I honestly can't find much in common between Sheeran's tune and "Let's Get it On." "Blurred Lines," on the other hand, does seem to cop from "Got to Give it Up," to the point you'd be forgiven for thinking Thicke just sang over the original rhythm track.
Years ago, Huey Lewis sued Ray Parker Jr for copyright infringement over the Ghostbusters theme song, which Lewis claimed was stolen from I Want a New Drug. Lewis won, but I just don't hear much, aside from the bass line, that the tunes have in common. To me, the George Harrison and Robin Thicke cases are more obvious, and I can see how the judgements went against them. Other cases, like the Lewis/Parker one, are more difficult. Here's a you tube vid that compares them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QtxR2SwFQc&ab_channel=TFEediting
If you look at both the chord progression and the structural tones of the melody, the way the two songs align is eerily similar. But I doubt that Ed did it on purpose.
My question is, why do Marvin Gaye's relatives keep suing everybody? I have no doubt that if you took a look at Marvin's work, it too would be eerily similar to his influencers. The only musician that I know of in the 20th century who came up with anything truly original and never heard before was Jimi Hendrix. Wave on; wave on.
I wonder who was the first person to copywrite a song in the form of twelve-bar blues?
Mr. Lopez, you just admitted in writing that you bill up to twice the time actually spent on a client issue. Didn't you see the the Tom Cruise movie The Firm?
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