Two musicians based in California are suing Ed Sheeran for $20m (£13.8m) over alleged copyrigt infringement of one of tbeir songs in Sheerhan's single 'Photograph'. Martin Harrington and American Thomas Leonard claim 'Photograph' has a similar structure to their song, 'Amazing'. The two songwriters allege Ed Sheeran's 2015 ballad has the same musical composition to their track, which was released as Matt Cardle's winning X Factor track in 2010. Harrington and Leonard say they wrote 'Amazing' in 2009. Ciurt filings include musical note comparison and chord breakdowns of the two songs, and the pair claim the chorus of Photograph shares 39 identical notes with their track. The court documents say that 'Photograph' has sold more than 3.5 million copies worldwide.
The claim also states that 'Photograph' features prominently in Hollywood drama Me Before You, released last week, as well as trailers for the film. Matt Cardle's version of 'Amazing' has more than one million views on YouTube, while Ed Sheeran's music video for 'Photograph' has 208 million
Documents were filed on Wednesday at LA's federal court in the Central District of California. Other named defendants being sued include Snow Patrol's Johnny McDaid, who is credited as a co-writer on' Photograph', as well as various divisions of Sony/ATV Music Publishing, Warner Music Group and its subsidiary, Atlantic Recording Corporation. Martin Harrington and Thomas Leonard, and their publishing company HaloSongs, want a trial and damages of more than $20m (£13.8m), as well as royalties from Sheerhan's song.
Emma Perot's recent 31st May IPKat article noted that Justin Bieber and Skrillex have been accused of copyright infringement by artist Casey Dienel, aka White Hinterland. Dienel has alleged that Bieber and Skrillex, whose 2015 hit single ‘Sorry’ has received 1.4 billion hits on YouTube, copied her vocal loop from her 2014 song ‘Ring the Bell’. The allegedly copied segment can be heard in the first five seconds of each song. Skrillex and Bieber have both denied the claims on their Twitter accounts. And that claim was before the recent deicision by the 9th circuit Court of Appeal in the 'Vogue' case on sampling and the decision by the German Constitutional Court's decision in Kraftwerk's case against Moses Pelham, both of which seems to have shifted the law in their respective countries - at least on sampling.
However If either of these claims goes to trial, it could be the 2016 edition of the infamous “Blurred Lines” dispute, which resulted in Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke being ordered to pay Marvin Gaye’s family $7.4 million USD (which was later reduced to $5.3 million) for infringing copyright in his 1977 hit ‘Got To Give It Up’. The trial over the possible infringements by Led Zepplin's iconic 'Stairway to Heaven' and alleged similarities to Spirit's 'Taurus' is another one to watch. In April, Judge R. Gary Klausner of United States District Court denied Led Zeppelin's request for summary judgment, saying: "While it is true that a descending chromatic four-chord progression is a common convention that abounds in the music industry, the similarities here transcend the core structure."
Lawyer Richard Busch who represented the Gaye family in Blurred Lines, is again involved in the Sheeran case, here acting for Harrington and Leonard.
Read more at: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/songs-on-trial-10-landmark-music-copyright-cases-20160608#ixzz4B5GH297G
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/36486648/ed-sheeran-is-being-sued-for-20m-by-two-songwriters-over-his-track-photograph
http://musiclawupdates.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/is-music-sampling-back-in-vogue.html
http://www.wipo.int/wipo_magazine/en/2015/05/article_0008.html
http://ipkitten.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/german-constitutional-court-sends.html
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/songs-on-trial-10-landmark-music-copyright-cases-20160608
A US Appeals court has decided that Madonna did not violate copyright law when her producer allegedly used a short section of music taken from another recording for her hit song “Vogue”. The split 2-1 decision must call into doubt the strict approach taken by the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in the leading case of Bridgeport Music, Inc., et al. v. Dimension Films, et al 410 F.3d 792 (September 2004). There the court in Cincinnati posed the question “If you cannot pirate the whole sound recording, can you ‘lift’ or ‘sample’ something less than the whole?” The Court’s answer to this was in the negative” and the court added “Get a license or do not sample – we do not see this as stifling creativity in any significant way.”
But in this new case, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said the horn segment at the heart of the copyright lawsuit lasted less than a second and would not have been recognisable to a general audience.
Judge Susan P. Graber said for the majority: "The horn hit occurs only a few times in ‘Vogue' .... without careful attention, the horn hits are easy to miss.” The decision fits in neatly with the December 2014 decision by New York federal judge Lewis Kaplan who dismissed TufAmerica's lawsuit against Jay Z and his record companies which alleged he had violated copyright by sampling an "oh" on the song, "Run This Town," released on the album The Blueprint 3 from an older sound recording entitled "Hook & Sling Part 1" saying ""Plaintiff's tautological argument that 'oh' must be qualitatively significant to Hook & Sling Part I and to the "Hook & Sling" Master because defendants' sampled it more than 40 times in "Run This Town" misunderstands copyright law generally and the substantial similarity test in particular," writes the judge, later adding, "If the original recording has been sampled at all ... the fact of the matter is that the samples appear only faintly in the background of Run This Town and are, at best, only barely perceptible to the average listener."
VMG Salsoul, LLC, which holds a copyright to “Love Break,” sued Madonna and others, alleging that Shep Pettibone, the producer of “Vogue,” copied a 0.23-second segment of horns from “Love Break,” which he had worked on years earlier. "Vogue" was a release from the album "I'm Breathless", and topped the charts in all major music markets reaching number one in the USA, the UK, Australia, Canada, Italy and Spain, selling six million units worldwide.
Having listened to the recordings Judge Graber held: “we conclude that a reasonable jury could not conclude that an average audience would recognize the appropriation of the composition.”
However, Judge Barry G. Silverman dissented, arguing that the use of the horn segments, if proven, would amount to infringement: “It is no defense to theft that the thief made off with only a ‘de minimis’ part of the victim’s property”. He said a copyright of a recording amounted to a “valuable property right, the stock-in-trade of artists who make their living recording music and selling records.”
The German Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe recently made a ruling in a case brought by the German avant garde rock band Kraftwerk against German music producer Moses Pelham over a two second sample - balancing the position of rights owners against a right of artistic freedom - coming down on the side of the latter. According to the Constitutional Court, requiring the phonogram producer's permission for taking even the "tiniest sliver" of a recording when it was possible to recreate the sound without copying violated freedom of art as it would essentially prohibit modern forms of pop music, namely hip hop, which relied on sampling. Norms of hip hop demanded actual sampling, not recreation of that snippet. Licensing was not a viable alternative namely for songs that were sampled from many other recordings, as it as it was very time consuming and prohibitively complicated.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/la-et-ms-madonna-vogue-copyright-law-20160602-snap-story.html
http://musiclawupdates.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/german-constitutional-court-sends.html
TufAmerica, Inc v WB Music Corp, et al. Case 1:13-cv-07874-LAK
Bridgeport Music, Inc., et al. v. Dimension Films, et al 410 F.3d 792
http://www.musiclawupdates.com/?p=199
Adi Lederman whpo hacked and released a number of unfinished and demo tracks from Madonna's Rebel Hart album in December 2014 when it was a work in progress has received a 14-month jail sentence from the Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court on Thursday as part of a plea-bargain deal following his conviction for cyber crimes against the pop singer. Lederman, a former contestant on Kochav Nolad, Israel's version of 'Pop Idol', hacked into Madonna's computers last year, having accessed passwords from the email accounts of her manager and musical director. It's thought Lederman also accessed part of the singer's work schedule in addition to the unfinished tracks from her album 'Rebel Heart'. He was charged with computer trespassing, fraud, and intellectual property offences against the superstar,
After the leak Madonna released six tracks and moved up the release date of the full album to March saying “I have been violated as a human and an artist!” Lederman had previously stolen a song from Madonna in 2012, which he sold rather than leaking himself.
Lederman was also fined NIS 15,000 (US $4,000) by the court, which said its sentence should “send a message of deterrence” and uncompromising commitment to the law to others like Lederman.
The sentence was more lenient than it might have been, in light of Lederman's medical issues, as well concerns that a full trial could lead to unintentional further exposure of Madonna’s personal details and those of people working with her.
http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Israeli-sentenced-to-14-months-in-jail-for-hacking-Madonna-408512 and http://consequenceofsound.net/2015/07/hacker-who-leaked-madonnas-rebel-heart-sentenced-to-14-months-in-prison/
