The Ed Sheeran Copyright Lawsuit Exposes The Absurdity of Music Ownership; Current Affairs, May 2, 2023

• Nathan J. Robinson, Current Affairs; The Ed Sheeran Copyright Lawsuit Exposes The Absurdity of Music Ownership 

"After all, the whole history of music (and the arts more broadly) is the history of taking what came before and reworking it. I don’t think it’s even possible to create something entirely original. Even the seemingly most original artists were often “original” in part because they were creative and eclectic thieves, taking from a diverse range of influences."

Judge Trims 'Blurred Lines' Song Dispute Verdict to $5.3M; Associated Press via New York Times, 7/14/15

Associated Press via New York Times; Judge Trims 'Blurred Lines' Song Dispute Verdict to $5.3M:

"A judge on Tuesday trimmed more than $2 million from a verdict against Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams over their hit "Blurred Lines," but Marvin Gaye's family will also get a significant share of future earnings from the 2013 hit song.

U.S. District Judge John A. Kronstadt ruled that the copyright infringement verdict a jury reached in March should be cut from nearly $7.4 million to $5.3 million. The judge's ruling, however, gives Gaye's family 50 percent of the song's future royalties.

Kronstadt's 56-page ruling dealt with several post-trial issues, including a request by Thicke and Williams' lawyers for a new trial. The judge rejected that motion, and also refused to issue an injunction requested by Gaye's family that would have temporarily blocked sales and performance of "Blurred Lines.""

Robin Thicke, Fair Use, Jackson v. AEG: Entertainment's Top Legal Disputes of 2013; Billboard, 12/27/13

Eriq Gardner, Billboard; Robin Thicke, Fair Use, Jackson v. AEG: Entertainment's Top Legal Disputes of 2013: "The year was so jam-packed with legal tussling that many show-stopping developments failed to make the cut of our top legal disputes from 2013...But in our view, here, in reverse order, are the ones that were the most gripping from 2013:... 7. Robin Thicke looks to protect "Blurred Lines" from theft claims For as long as there has been pop music, there's been fighting over who stole or borrowed or sampled what from whom. When Robin Thicke and his producers filed a lawsuit this past summer against Marvin Gaye's children, a few things raised the bar: The lawsuit was a preemptive strike against allegations that the year's most successful song was a derivative of Gaye's "Got to Give It Up." The litigation now involves both sides enlisting some of the industry's most esteemed lawyers to wrangle over the issue of when similarity in songcraft rises to copyright infringement. Now there's even a counterclaim that raises the issue of a conflict and lack of diligence by one of the industry's biggest song publishers... 5. "Fair Use" explodes as a public issue Technology has made duplication easier than ever. A counterpoint to copyright is fair use, or lawful exceptions to a rights-holder's ability to control derivatives. This past year brought two huge decisions on this front. First, after a nearly decade-long fight, Google got a federal judge to declare that its scanning of some 20 million library books was a fair use. Second, an appeals court concluded that artist Richard Prince had made fair use of most of photographer Patrick Cariou's work. Both cases are ongoing (on appeal or back at the trial court). Meanwhile, the issue of what's transformative and what's not has entered the public stream of conscious in other ways -- from Sony Pictures' win over a William Faulkner quote referenced in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris to the recent controversy over a toy company's use of The Beastie Boys' "Girls.""

In Dispute Over a Song, Marvin Gaye’s Family Files a Countersuit; New York Times, 10/30/13

Ben Sisario, New York Times; In Dispute Over a Song, Marvin Gaye’s Family Files a Countersuit: "According to the suit, which was first reported by The Hollywood Reporter, a musicologist, Judith Finell, studied “Blurred Lines” and “Got to Give It Up” and found “a constellation of at least eight distinctive and important compositional elements” between them... In a statement, Sony/ATV said that another musicologist had determined that “Blurred Lines” did not infringe on “Got to Give It Up,” and also defended its corporate role as a steward for songwriters."