Among the last few lines of Led Zeppelin’s rock ballad Stairway to Heaven are the lyrics “And if you listen very hard/The tune will come to you at last./When all are one and one is all…” Spirit guitarist Randy Wolfe brought suit against Led Zeppelin for copyright infringement, apparently thinking that one did not even have to listen very hard to hear the similarities between the Zeppelin song and his song Taurus after a side-by-side comparison. After the recent victory of Marvin Gaye’s heirs in the Blurred Lines suit against Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams, where the similarities were, to many, not as striking when the songs were juxtaposed, the Spirit plaintiffs may have had visions of victory and “all that glitters is gold.” But, last month, a California jury rejected the Wolfe claim, and “it really makes me wonder” what the implications may be for music copyright infringement claims.
When another Los Angeles jury decided in 2015 that Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke’s 2013 mega-hit infringed Marvin Gaye’s 1977 single Got to Give It Up, many saw music copyright claims as having potentially lost their moorings. That was because Blurred Lines did not copy any substantial note progression or lyrics, but rather seemed to emulate or imitate a feeling or vibe from Got to Give It Up. But experts contended that “it is not copyright infringement to write a song with the same ‘groove’ or ‘feel’ as another. That’s how creativity works: new musicians build on the genres and styles that preceded them.” Indeed, a sense emerged that the victory of the Gaye heirs was the result of a blurring of legal lines more than anything else—as a Duke law professor noted:
Read more: http://www.ilnipinsider.com/2016/07/if-you-listen-very-hard-stairway-to-heaven-verdict-may-have-unblurred-lines-in-music-infringement-cases/
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