‘Blurred Lines’ Infringed on Marvin Gaye Copyright, Jury Rules
I have to agree with the verdict because Blurred Lines goes well beyond quoting or homage, it’s basically retreading the entire song with new lyrics and modern recording techniques. To prove my point there are literally hundreds of songs out there that quote Marvin Gaye tunes, insert sections of actual Marvin Gaye tunes, and many artists who use his vocal styling to evoke that era. None of them got sued - but when your song wouldn’t exist without the majority of the score of the original as your melody then you should lose a copyright case, and this does not create a “dangerous precedent” at all.
Characterizing it as “borrowing a groove” is also just wrong because most times when it comes to Funk, the Bass line IS the song.
For the last year and a half, the music industry has been gripped by a lawsuit over whether Robin Thicke’s 2013 hit “Blurred Lines” was merely reminiscent of a song by Marvin Gaye, or had crossed the line into plagiarism.
The eight jurors in the case were instructed by the judge, John A. Kronstadt of United States District Court, to compare “Blurred Lines” and “Got to Give It Up” only on the basis of their “sheet music” versions — meaning their fundamental chords, melodies and lyrics, and not the sounds of their commercial recordings.A federal jury in Los Angeles on Tuesday agreed that “Blurred Lines” had gone too far, and copied elements of Gaye’s 1977 song “Got to Give It Up” without permission. The jury found that Mr. Thicke, with Pharrell Williams, who shares a songwriting credit on the track, had committed copyright infringement, and it awarded more than $7.3 million to Mr. Gaye’s family.
Nona and Frankie Gaye, two of Marvin Gaye’s children, are to receive $4 million in damages plus about $3.3 million of the profits earned by Mr. Thicke and Mr. Williams, as well as about $9,000 in statutory damages. The decision is believed to be one of the largest damages awards in a music copyright case. In one of the few comparable cases, in 1994, Michael Bolton and Sony were ordered to pay $5.4 million for infringing on a 1960s song by the soul group the Isley Brothers.
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