WIPR survey: ‘Blurred Lines’ spurs flurry of copyright suits
The long-running “Blurred Lines” copyright saga appears to have encouraged more people to target high-profile songs for infringement, according to WIPR readers.
The ruling saw Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke, the writers of hit song “Blurred Lines”, liable for infringing the copyright to a Marvin Gaye song,
Responding to WIPR’s most recent survey, nearly three-quarters of respondents said they thought that the ruling had sparked a copyright infringement frenzy.
In March 2015 Williams and Thicke were ordered to pay late soul singer Gaye’s family more than $7 million after a jury at the US District Court for the Central District of California said the song infringed copyright to his 1977 hit “Got to Give it Up”.
In August WIPR reported that the pair, along with rapper and co-writer T.I, filed an opening brief at the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit seeking to overturn the judgment.
The filing claimed that “what happened was a cascade of legal errors, warranting this court’s reversal or a new trial”, a sentiment that more than 200 musicians seemed to agree with.
WIPR reported that the musicians, which include Danger Mouse (Brian Burton), Earth, Wind & Fire, Fall Out Boy, Hall & Oates, Linkin Park, R. Kelly and Train, submitted an amicus brief supporting the writers.
As it stands, the majority of our readers believe that this ruling has spurred a string of copyright lawsuits.
“People who have created anything in the arts, be it music, books or screenplays, will have incentive to parlay even minor similarities in their works into perceived money-making lawsuits,” said one respondent.
It added: “Most do not have deep pockets, so there is no great likelihood of having to pay opposing counsel fees even if they lose.”
The opening brief claimed that the district court had made things worse by “erroneously” allowing the Gayes’ experts to testify about the sound recording and only play selected excerpts from both songs.
Another respondent explained that the court had applied copyright beyond lyrics and melody (sheet music) into “nebulous similarity”, encouraging suits based on this basis.
Ariana Grande and Demi Lovato have been two of the more recent singers targeted by copyright suits.
Another respondent said that the outcome of the case was “absurd”, adding that it “showed that a song with almost no common elements with a copyright work beyond the absolutely mundane can be judged to infringe copyright”.
It went on to claim that “it is yet another example of the ridiculous outcomes of US IP litigation resulting from the use of juries”.
For this week’s survey, we ask: “Last week we reported on the leaked draft of the EU’s copyright directive. One of the most controversial aspects is the neighbouring right provision for news publishers, which would allow them to charge online news aggregators for displaying parts of their work in search results. Is the provision one step too far?
