This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Business News Legal
Blurred Lines copyright case kicks off
By Chris Cooke | Published on Wednesday 25 February 2015
So, we all know that chart-topping rape anthem ‘Blurred Lines’ was a shameful pop monstrosity which single-handedly confirmed that a sinister stream of misogynistic arrogance and dangerous indifference continues to flow freely through parts of a male-dominated and domestic-abuse-ignoring music industry, that’s a given, but was the song a lazy rip off of someone else’s hard work?
That’s the question judge John A Kronstadt has now posed to an eight-member jury. Well, some of those words in the first paragraph might have been more mine than his, but that’s basically the gist of what went down yesterday. Because yes, the ‘Blurred Lines’ copyright trial has got to court.
As much previously reported, the family of Marvin Gaye accuse Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams of lifting plenty of his track ‘Got To Give It Up’ for their song ‘Blurred Lines’, partly because Thicke admitted in an interview that he and Williams had set out to create something in the vein of the Gaye song, and partly because of the similarities between the two tracks. So basically it’s a ‘when does imitation become infringement?’ case.
Pre-trial deliberations have narrowed the reach of the case somewhat, in that it’s the song copyright, rather than any copyright in Gaye’s recording of it, that Thicke and Williams are accused of infringing.
But more than that, lawyers for the duo convinced the judge that only the core score of the song, as set out in the published sheet music, is protected by copyright; any extra elements added in the making of Gaye’s track have no IP protection. Which is why the judge has insisted that the two songs be played on a keyboard in court, rather than allowing the released records to be played.
This is important in that, if Thicke and Williams did lift from ‘Got To Give It Up’, it’s arguable they mainly borrowed elements of the track that emerged in the recording rather than the original composition.
Which possibly means the Gayes face an uphill struggle here. So let’s just hope Thicke and Williams make idiots of themselves during the trial, so at least we get that even if they end up winning. And both were in court yesterday, and are due to testify during the eight day hearing. As will the other collaborator on ‘Blurred Lines’, TI, plus Thicke’s ex-wife Paula Patton.
Kicking things off yesterday, the Gaye family’s legal rep Richard Busch recalled the aforementioned interviews where Thicke discussed the influence of Gaye and ‘Got To Give It Up’ on his own hit. Noting that in a subsequent deposition Thicke played down those comments, claiming to have actually had next to no involvement in crafting ‘Blurred Lines’ due to him being drunk and stuffed full of Vicodin at the time, Busch said that the singer had just changed his story because of the legal action.
Speaking for the terrible twosome, Howard King said that depositions and testimonies, and not media interviews, are what the jury should focus on. According to The Hollywood Reporter, he told jurors: “There are many unsworn interviews of people trying to sell records. It’s going to be easy to get distracted by the perhaps tawdry details of what goes on in the music business”.
Repeating Thicke’s most recent claims, King said: “You’re obviously going to hear details that are embarrassing about Mr Thicke’s personal life. But what you’re going to hear is that Mr Thicke did not write that song. He was supposed to be in the studio with Mr Williams, because that’s the way Mr Williams likes it, to have the artist there, but it came to ten at night and Mr Thicke was nowhere to be found. Mr Williams sat down and wrote the song, wrote the music, in an hour”.
Meanwhile, noting his previous victory in having the case narrowed so that only the core composition of ‘Got To Give It Up’ can be considered, the legal man added: “The sheet music was only consulted a few months ago, after hundreds of thousands of dollars spent, and it was revealed that a lot of elements of the recordings are not in the sheet music. We’re going to show you what you already know: that no one owns a genre or a style or a groove. To be inspired by Marvin Gaye is an honourable thing”.
The case continues.
