There's a famous case now.
It's over the song Blurred Lines that Robin Thicke and Pharrell
Williams recorded.
And the Marvin Gaye family, part of the family at least, the estate,
sued Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams
saying Blurred Lines infringed their song Got to Give It Up.
And it went to trial, and the outcome, I think, was horrible.
It was found that they had, that Thicke and Williams,
had infringed Marvin Gaye's song.
Initially it was a $7.3 million award that was supposed to be paid.
The problem with that case--
well, there are several.
I was interviewed about it before it had gotten far in the courts at all.
I was interviewed many times about it.
What it comes down to is this-- it's the worst
example I've ever seen, because what's in common between the two songs
is sort of a feel and a style.
It's Motown.
It's four string Fender bass.
It's a drum set.
You can hear a cowbell, or is it a coke bottle?
But you're hearing some percussion instrument like that.
You're hearing some noise of people in the background.
They're having a good time, partying sounds.
And the speeds are similar.
But that's where the things in common evaporate.
It ends right there.
No melody was copied between the two songs.
No melody.
And by melody, I'll get to the smallest definition you can--
two adjacent pitches with the same notes and same rhythm.
You cannot find two side by side that are the same.
There are no chords in common between them, like a G chord to a D chord
Or an A chord to a C chord.
Nothing.
No chords are the same, which is really foolish as well.
So no melody, no chords.
There are no lyrics.
None of the words, they're not taking just a short phrase.
There's none of that.
There's no rhythmic features.
So they didn't copy a specific rhythm.
None of that.
There was no sampling involved.
Sampling is taking from a sound recording.
You're copying a portion of a sound recording.
So you're getting a composition that's embodied in the sound recording,
and the exact sounds.
So there was none of that here.
So again, this is the worst case I have ever seen, and the worst decision.
Because no melody was copied, no chords were copied, no rhythm was copied,
no lyrics were copied, and there was no sampling.
And I am now involved in the appeal of that.
It took place in Los Angeles.
It's being appealed to the Ninth Circuit, which
is a court in San Francisco.
And a lot of people are on board on our side
to say that this was really a bad decision.
Because now, it has a way of stifling and frightening people.
One of the things that Thicke or Williams said
was that they were influenced by Marvin Gaye.
Well, if you're in most kinds of popular music,
how could you not be influenced by Marvin Gaye?
You've heard Marvin Gaye or Stevie Wonder or the Beatles,
or just fill in hundreds more names.
All of us have been influenced.
And if you're inspired by someone or influenced, that's fine.
Everything is that way.
So this decision was really bad.
It's under appeal.
And just to say a few more things about it,
the judge allowed some evidence in that he probably shouldn't have.
The recording was-- this is a little bit of inside baseball here, I suppose,
or inside copyright.
The Marvin Gaye song was registered with the Copyright Office in 1977,
and what you had to register in those days
was the sheet music, because the sound recording was not
protected by federal law.
So they registered the sheet music.
Now, the expert witnesses for the Marvin Gaye side
based their work on the sound recording, but the sound recording
is not what's at issue and is not supposed to have been allowed in.
Yet it was.
So that's one of the problems.
Those are big issues--
cases like that.
They can cost a lot of money, you don't know the outcome,
and there are just a lot of ways to avoid that.
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