Copyright
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For roughly half a century, John Fogerty had tried to recover the rights to dozens of hits he wrote for Creedence Clearwater Revival. At the age of 77, he had almost given up hope, when he and his wife, Julie Fogerty, who also works as his manager, realized they were on the cusp of a second chance thanks to the Copyright Act of 1976.
That law–specifically sections 304(c) and 203–are intended to give musicians, songwriters and other creators a second bite at the apple by enabling them to recapture the copyrights to compositions and recordings, in the United States only, that they may have signed away earlier in their careers. Songs dating from before 1978 can revert to their creator or heirs after 56 years, and songs from after 1978 can revert to the creator or heirs after 35 years, provided they file the proper paperwork.
Realizing that many of John’s songs were nearing that 56-year threshold, Julie reached a deal with Concord in January that returned majority control to her husband of worldwide publishing rights to over 65 Creedence classics.
Although clearing the legal and corporate hurdles to recapture rights can be significant and compromises are often negotiated, some industry insiders say that same law could lead to artists putting up for sale their newly recovered catalogs in a way that stokes the already hot market for publishing and recording rights.
“You have this interesting confluence of the big, big moment in classic rock, and you’re also getting to the 35-year window for late-1980s songs,” says Concord CEO Bob Valentine, who mentioned the mutually “happy outcome” with John during a discussion about works from the late ’60s and late ’80s approaching their reversion dates.
“Those are two huge windows for multiple genres,” he adds. “It makes the [catalog investment] market really interesting at this moment in time.”
Clearing the hurdles — both within the law and presented by music companies — to recapture rights is complicated, but there is some precedent to support this optimism. In 2013, when the first wave of post-1978 works approached the 35-year threshold, Billboard reported that nearly 20 of the world’s most famous songwriters had filed termination notices with the U.S. Copyright Office, including Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson, Gerry Goffin & Carole King, Willie Nelson, Daryl Hall & John Oates and the estates of Buddy Holly and Bo Diddley.
Lisa Alter, a founding partner at Alter Kendrick & Baron in New York and an expert in rights reversion negotiations, says a new surge has already begun. “Commerce has definitely increased in this area,” she says. “It will continue to increase, and at some point, maybe 10-plus years down the line, things will start to level off.”
Sources cautioned, however, that rights reversions — particularly for master recordings — rarely work out so cleanly as the law implies, and that likely only a fraction of the hit song catalogs reaching the 35-year or 56-year milestones will revert to their owners.
While John was able to regain a majority share of his worldwide publishing rights, Concord retains the Creedence master recordings in its catalog and, as of January, was still administering the rocker’s share of the publishing catalog. (Concord obtained Creedence’s recordings through the 2004 acquisition of Fantasy Records.) While John regained only publishing rights this year, Concord reinstated and improved his artist royalties shortly after the acquisition.
A key argument used by industry observers who predict the spate of copyright reversions will superheat the catalog investment market in the coming years is that superstar artists and songwriters who were behind hit records in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s are aging and may be considering selling their rights to pass down a simpler inheritance to their heirs.
Before that can happen, however, artists and songwriters — or their heirs, if they are deceased — are required to serve the U.S. Copyright Office and their current music publisher or record company a termination notice at least two years before the songs turn 35 or 56, and they cannot enter any agreement with a third party before their current contract is terminated. Whoever has been holding those rights has the right of first refusal to acquire them.
While that option often leads the incumbent rights holder to negotiate new deals with the artists seeking to recover their rights, Alter says that since 1978, publishers have usually acquiesced when artists seek to reclaim their publishing rights, and labels have largely sought to block attempts to reclaim sound recording rights.
“There has been almost universal opposition on the part of the labels to the [termination] notices,” she says, with labels often arguing the notice was not validly served or the artist or songwriter produced the song as a work for hire. “While some artists have successfully gotten their rights back, in the majority of cases, the record label has renegotiated the leases.”
Many artists have attempted to sue major labels for their responses to termination notices — so far almost always unsuccessfully. One closely watched case was brought by “Missing You” singer John Waite, who sought class action status for hundreds of artists to sue Universal Music Group to regain control of their masters. The class action request was denied in January after a judge said there were complex and unique issues raised by each artist’s relationship with UMG that could not be resolved on an “aggregate basis.”
Round Hill Music co-founder Josh Gruss, who was an early investor in songs as an asset class, says he questions whether the rights reversion trend will result in more copyrights coming to the investment market.
“It’s really hard for significant recordings to fall out of the major-label system,” he says.
That said, Gruss acknowledges that attractive copyrights that have reverted to an artist or songwriter frequently come up for outside investment. For example, songwriter Eddie Schwartz, who wrote 100% of Pat Benatar’s 1980 top 10 Billboard Hot 100 hit “Hit Me With Your Best Shot,” reclaimed his publishing rights to the song in 2015 and sold them to Round Hill. Gruss says they’ve both been happy with the result.
When it comes to master recordings, however, Gruss agrees with Alter’s assessment.
“The labels have always done a masterful job of not letting the recordings revert,” he says.
More than nine years after members of the 1960s rock band The Turtles filed a series of groundbreaking lawsuits over the legal protections for so-called pre-1972 sound recordings, a federal judge has now dismissed their final case — a lawsuit against Pandora that he called the band’s “last case standing.”
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In a decision issued Wednesday, Judge Philip Gutierrez ruled that the Sirius XM-owned Pandora had not violated California state law by streaming the band’s songs, like the iconic 1967 cut “Happy Together,” without permission and without paying sound recording royalties.
In doing so, the judge recounted the decade-long story of how the two founders of the Turtles (legally Flo & Eddie, Inc.) filed such cases against music services in courts around the country — and how they had lost in every one of them.
“This case is one of many lawsuits brought by Flo & Eddie, seeking to hold internet and satellite radio services liable for the unauthorized public performance and reproduction of its sound recordings that were fixed prior to February 15, 1972,” the judge wrote. “Flo & Eddie’s action against Pandora is the last case standing.”
The Turtles first sued SiriusXM and Pandora in 2014, claiming that both companies had been illegally refusing to paying royalties for pre-1972 songs. That was a legal gray area at the time, since songs prior to that year had not been covered by federal sound recording copyrights. But the Turtles claimed pre-1972s could still be covered by state-level laws aimed at preventing misappropriation.
Initially, the band won a key ruling in California federal court, finding that California state law contained a so-called public performance right that would require services like Sirius and Pandora to start paying up. But then, slowly but surely, courts around the country — first the top court in New York, then the Florida Supreme Court, then a federal appeals court in California — ruled no such right existed.
“One after another, federal circuit courts and state Supreme Courts answered with a resounding ‘no’,” Judge Gutierrez wrote in Wednesday’s ruling.
In some ways, Wednesday’s ruling is anti-climactic. The larger issues raised by the Turtle’s pioneering lawsuits — whether the owners of a vast swath of American recorded music were entitled to a new revenue stream from services like SiriusXM and Pandora — were largely rendered moot by the passage of the federal Music Modernization Act in 2018. Among other major changes, that law required such royalties to be paid for pre-1972 records, ending the state-level ambiguity that drove the Turtles to sue.
But Judge Gutierrez had previously ruled that the MMA’s new requirements did not apply to pending lawsuits, meaning that the band still could have won a ruling forcing Pandora to hand over unpaid royalties from the years before the MMA’s enactment.
Barring a successful appeal, Wednesday’s ruling foreclosed that possibility: “The court grants Pandora’s motion for summary judgment. This order closes the case.”
In seeking to revive their lawsuit against Pandora, the Turtles argued that, even if no public performance right existed under California state law, the streamer had still violated their so-called reproduction right by illegally copying their music to make it available on the service. But those “repackaged” claims had also been rejected by the other courts, Judge Gutierrez wrote.
“Even if the Court would like to independently consider these claims, its ‘hands are tied,’” the judge wrote. “In the absence of an exclusive right to publicly perform its pre-1972 sound recordings, Flo & Eddie has no viable copyright claim against Pandora.”
A Mississippi woman has dropped her copyright lawsuit claiming that Taylor Swift stole aspects of a self-published book of poetry when she created a companion book for her album Lover, months after the star’s lawyers called it a case that “never should have been filed.”
Teresa La Dart sued Swift last year, claiming that “a number of creative elements” from her 2010 book (also called Lover) were copied into Swift’s book. But in a motion filed Thursday in Tennessee federal court, La Dart’s lawyer said she would permanently drop the case.
The sudden voluntary dismissal — which appears to be unilateral and not the product of any kind of settlement — came after Swift’s lawyers harshly criticized the lawsuit in their last filing. Demanding that case be dismissed, they said it was “legally and factually baseless” and “never should have been filed.”
Those arguments echoed what legal experts told Billboard were serious flaws in La Dart’s case. Lawyers said that she was essentially suing Swift over stock elements that could not be monopolized by any one author: “This person might as well sue anyone who’s ever written a diary or made a scrap book.”
Faced with such strong counter-arguments, dropping the case might have made monetary sense for La Dart. If she had continued to litigate the case and had ultimately lost, the judge may have ordered her to repay Swift’s legal bills — a sum that could have totaled tens of thousands of dollars.
La Dart sued Swift in August over the star’s Lover book — an extra bundled with the special edition of her Lover album that the New York Times called a “must-read companion” for Swifties. Released in four different versions, Swift’s book included a total of 120 pages of personal diary entries, accompanied by photos selected by the singer.
The lawsuit claimed that Swift had borrowed a number of visual elements from La Dart, including “pastel pinks and blues” and an image of the author “photographed in a downward pose.” She also claimed a copyright to the book’s overall format, including “a recollection of past years memorialized in a combination of written and pictorial components” and “interspersed photographs and writings.”
Just one problem: In their response in February, Swift’s lawyers said those elements were nothing more than commonplace features of almost any book, meaning they fall well short of being unique enough to qualify for copyright protection.
“This is a lawsuit that never should have been filed,” attorney Doug Baldridge wrote for the superstar. “These allegedly-infringing elements, each a generic design format, are not subject to copyright protection. Thus, defendants could not possibly have infringed plaintiff’s copyright.”
That motion to dismiss the case remained pending when La Dart dropped the case on Thursday. Baldridge did not return a request for comment on Thursday.
La Dart’s attorney William S. Parks did not immediately return a request for comment. But after Swift’s response in February, he defended bringing the case: “Miss La Dart has questions that will hopefully and eventually be answered regarding her perceived similarities between the two works,” Parks said at the time. “Unfortunately, she felt it necessary to bring this suit in order to possibly obtain such answers. We will see how the judge decides at this point.”
DaBaby has been dropped from a copyright lawsuit accusing him and Dua Lipa of ripping off their smash hit “Levitating” from decades-old songs.
In an order Monday (July 10), a Manhattan federal judge granted a request by lawyers for L. Russell Brown and Sandy Linzer to voluntarily dismiss the rapper from their case, which claims Lipa’s massive hit infringed their 1979 song “Wiggle and Giggle All Night” and their 1980 song “Don Diablo.”
The accusers did not explain why they were dropping their case against DaBaby (real name Jonathan Lyndale Kirk), who featured on a popular remix of Lipa’s song. But they made clear that the case would continue against Lipa herself and music companies involved in the song: “For the avoidance of doubt, plaintiffs maintain and do not hereby dismiss their claims against any other defendant in this matter.”
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An attorney for Brown and Linzer declined to comment on why they had dismissed DaBaby from the case. An attorney for DaBaby did not return a request for comment.
Brown and Linzer’s case, filed in March 2022, was one of two federal copyright lawsuits filed in quick succession over “Levitating” — a massive hit that spent 77 weeks on the Hot 100 and was named the No. 1 Hot 100 song of 2021. The case claimed the melody that starts just a few seconds into “Levitating,” when Lipa sings “If you wanna run away with me,” was a “duplicate” of a similar passage featured in the two earlier songs.
The other “Levitating” case, filed just days earlier by a reggae band named Artikal Sound System, claimed Lipa had lifted her song’s core hook from their little-known 2015 song “Live Your Life.” But the band dropped that lawsuit last month, just days after a federal judge cast serious doubt on whether Artikal could prove that Lipa ever even heard their song.
Though Brown and Linzer’s case will continue against Lipa, they could be facing a similar ruling soon.
Last summer, Lipa’s lawyers made the same arguments as they made in the Artikal case, saying the two accusers could not prove that she had ever had “access” to the earlier songs — a make-or-break requirement for any copyright lawsuit. Brown and Linzer’s attorneys have countered that their songs had millions of listens on internet platforms, giving the “Levitating” writers ample opportunity to hear them.
A ruling on that question is pending.
The National Music Publishers’ Association says its members are suing Twitter over allegations of widespread copyright infringement and seeking hundreds of millions in damages, telling the Elon Musk-owned site it can no longer “refuse to pay songwriters and music publishers.”
In the lawsuit, which the group plans to announce during its annual meeting Wednesday (June 14), dozens of music publishers allege that Twitter had infringed more than 1,700 different songs — a claim that, if proven, could put the social media giant on the hook for as much as $255 million in damages.
“Twitter profits handsomely from its infringement of publishers’ repertoires of musical compositions,” the music companies write in their complaint, which was obtained by Billboard. “Twitter’s unlawful conduct has caused and continues to cause substantial and irreparable harm to Publishers, their songwriter clients, and the entire music ecosystem.”
Twitter did not respond to immediate request for comment.
The plaintiffs named in the lawsuit, set to be filed in Tennessee federal court, include Concord, UMPG, peermusic, ABKCO Music, Anthem Entertainment, Big Machine Music, BMG Rights Management, Hipgnosis Songs Group, Kobalt Music Publishing America, Mayimba Music, Reservoir Media Management, Sony Music Publishing, Spirit Music Group, The Royalty Network, Ultra Music Publishing, Warner Chappell Music, and Wixen Music Publishing.
The announcement that the NMPA would be pursuing legal action against Twitter shouldn’t come as a total surprise. In a February speech at the Association of Independent Music Publishers (AIMP) summit, NMPA president and CEO David Israelite called Twitter his “top legal focus” this year. He warned that the company was “hiding behind” the Digital Millenium Copyright Act – the federal law that limits how websites like Twitter can be sued over copyright infringement by their users.
In a statement on Wednesday, Israelite echoed that threat, saying that Twitter could no longer “hide behind the DMCA and refuse to pay songwriters and music publishers.”
“Twitter stands alone as the largest social media platform that has completely refused to license the millions of songs on its service,” Israelite said in a statement. “Twitter knows full well that music is leaked, launched, and streamed by billions of people every day on its platform.”
The DMCA provides websites like Twitter with a legal immunity — a “safe harbor” — against copyright lawsuits over material uploaded by their users, so long as they promptly remove infringing content and ban repeated violators from the platform. But in their new lawsuit, the publishers allege that Twitter failed to do either, meaning the site has legally forfeited the DMCA’s protections.
“Twitter routinely ignores known repeat infringers and known infringements, refusing to take simple steps that are available to Twitter to stop these specific instances of infringement of which it is aware,” the publishers wrote.
The NMPA annual meeting each year is known to feature at least one bombshell announcement from Israelite. Last year, the NMPA launched a legal action against over a hundred different apps that skim music from digital services without obtaining licenses, sent cease and desist notices to Apple and Google app stores, and filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against music video-making app Vinkle. In 2021, Israelite announced $200 million copyright infringement lawsuit against Roblox for hosting thousands of unlicensed songs within the game’s library.
The NMPA’s public grievances with Twitter date back to at least April 2021, when a Billboard published a guest column, co-penned by Israelite and RIAA chief Mitch Glazier. In it, the two leaders called for social media platform to license music and noted that in the last year music creators had sent more than 2 million notices to Twitter of unlicensed and infringing appearances of copyrighted music on the platform, more than 200,000 of which were of unreleased songs. “The company’s response to date has been totally inadequate,” the article lamented. It went on to suggest three ways for Twitter to address the grievances the music business has had with its operations: “licensing music and pay music creators like others do,” “better content protection tools,” and “stop demanding exorbitant payments from creators for content protection.”
Since Jack Dorsey stepped down from Twitter in November 2021, the stability of the company has been in constant flux. By the time Musk bought the company and assumed the role of CEO in October 2022, Twitter’s future seemed even more uncertain amid Musk’s controversial leadership, widespread cost cutting measures, and restructuring of the company. Since Dorsey’s departure, Israelite has taken to the platform to express his hope that subsequent chiefs like Parag Agrawal, Musk and now Linda Yaccarino would “finally” “take a new approach” with licensing music.
But in Wednesday’s lawsuit, the publishers said things had only gotten worse: “Twitter’s change in ownership in October 2022 has not led to improvements in how it acts with respect to copyright. On the contrary, Twitter’s internal affairs regarding matters pertinent to this case are in disarray.”
Licensing for games, social media, and other applications is quickly becoming a major component of music publishers’ income. At last year’s annual meeting, NMPA announced that licensing from new revenue streams — like Twitch, Roblox, Peloton and others — now account for 29.11% of music publishers’ income, something that is expected to only rise over time. This has come with the success of the NMPA’s aggressive legal agenda in recent years, and has helped publishers diversify their income from streaming, which is strictly regulated in the U.S. by the Copyright Royalty Board.
In the lawsuit against Twitter, the publishers noted that TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat had all entered into such broader licensing deals, enabling their users to use copyrighted music while still compensating songwriters. Twitter, they wrote, cannot not continue to be the exception.
“Twitter is seizing for itself an artificial competitive advantage against companies that are not violating copyright law, undercutting existing markets, cheapening the value of music, and undermining Publishers’ well-established business models,” lawyers for the publishers wrote.
A Grammy Award-winning composer has dropped her closely-watched lawsuit against YouTube over access to its anti-piracy tools like Content ID, just a day before it had been set to go to trial — and weeks after a federal judge gutted the case by refusing to let it move forward as a class action.
Maria Schneider spent years litigating her lawsuit, which claimed that YouTube had become a “hotbed of piracy” because it provided effective content tools only to “powerful copyright owners” like record labels and not to “ordinary owners” like artists and songwriters.
But on Sunday (June 11), with a jury trial scheduled to kick off on Monday morning), lawyers for both sides told a federal judge that they had agreed to end the case without a decision: “In light of the stipulation of dismissal of all claims with prejudice, the jury trial set for June 12, 2023, is vacated,” Judge James Donato wrote. “The case is closed.”
The sudden end to the case came just weeks after Judge Donato issued a crucial ruling that dramatically reduced the scope of the lawsuit: That Schneider could not team up with tens of thousands of other rightsholders who she claims suffered similar harm from YouTube’s policies.
Schneider quickly moved to appeal that ruling and postpone the trial, arguing that it would “gravely undermine” the goals of her lawsuit. But a federal appeals court denied that motion on Friday.
Faced with a jury trial they had warned would be “enormously wasteful,” Schneider’s lawyers dropped their case. Neither side immediately returned requests for more information about how the resolution of the litigation was reached, including specific details about any kind of settlement agreement.
Filed in 2020, Schneider’s lawsuit claims that YouTube (owned by Google parent Alphabet) forces songwriters and other smaller rights holders to use “vastly inferior and time-consuming manual means” of policing infringement, allowing piracy of their material to flourish on the platform.
For its part, YouTube says it’s done nothing wrong. In court documents, the company has argued that it’s spent “spent over $100 million developing industry-leading tools” to prevent piracy, but that it limits access because “in the hands of the wrong party, these tools can cause serious harm.”
The case was filed as a class action, aiming to let potentially tens of thousands of aggrieved copyright owners team up to fight what Schneider’s lawsuit called “institutionalized misbehavior.” An expert retained by her legal team said the class could include between 10,000 and 20,000 rights holders.
But in a May 22 ruling, Judge Donato refused to “certify” the case as a class action. Under federal law, class-action accusers must share very similar legal concerns — and the judge said Schneider’s fellow rights holders would have widely different cases against YouTube.
Following that ruling, Schneider quickly moved to postpone the trial. But at a hearing days after the decision, Donato said he would stick to the schedule: “I’m not going to do that. You got a trial set on June 12th. This is a 2020 case; OK. It’s showtime.”
In a June 5 emergency petition to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Schneider’s lawyers demanded the appeals court put the case on ice while she filed an appeal on the class certification issue. They argued that a “brief” pause would prevent the judge’s “last-minute, haphazard and erroneous” ruling from derailing a case with important implications.
“The named plaintiffs here joined the case to litigate class claims, and to vindicate their view that YouTube tramples on the rights of independent artists and smaller copyright holders overall, not just those of the individual plaintiffs,” her lawyers told the appeals court.
But in a ruling published on Friday evening, the Ninth Circuit rejected those arguments: “The court, in its discretion, denies the petition for permission to appeal,” the court wrote. “Petitioners’ emergency motion for a stay is denied as moot.”
Schneider and her lawyers still could have proceeded to trial against YouTube, litigating the case simply on behalf of her and another plaintiff. But they had strongly indicated in court filings that they did not want to proceed to the trial without class-action status.
A week after winning his landmark copyright case, Ed Sheeran is celebrating by playing the Academy of Country Music (ACM) Awards in Frisco, Texas tonight. Though only announced Tuesday (May 9), his appearance has been in the works for a few weeks when an unrevealed artist invited him to play together.
That artist and their performance are a secret, but Sheeran is also playing “Life Goes On,” from his new album – (Subtract).
If he has it his way, Sheeran will be making a lot more country music. “I talk about this to my wife all the time. I would love to transition into country,” he tells Billboard backstage at the Ford Center at The Star at Frisco following rehearsal. “I love the culture of it, I just love the songwriting. It’s just like brilliant songs.”
Sheeran considers himself a major country music fan. He’s lived in Nashville twice for extended periods of time in 2013 and 2018 and found himself very inspired by the local songwriters. “It’s like a community. There’s not really a place in Europe where you could point and say, ‘That’s the home of songwriting,’” he says. “It’s not just for country music. Nashville is just a hub of incredible songwriters, incredible performers. And I really felt inspired just being there being around everyone.”
He has Taylor Swift to thank for turning him on to country music. “I’d never really listened to country music as a kid growing up. It was only being on Taylor’s Red tour and living in Nashville and her basically introducing me to that side of it.”
Now he’s a convert, adding that “there’s a radio station in England called [CountryLine Radio] that me and my wife have on all day, every day in the kitchen.”
As country grows in popularity internationally, he predicts more artists experiencing global success. “Luke Combs could probably play a stadium in England. I think if he put on Wembley [Stadium] next summer, he could sell it.” (Combs, who is on a world tour, already has two O2 Arena dates in London on his October calendar.)
As Sheeran celebrates his May 4 copyright victory during which a jury ruled that his 2014 hit “Thinking Out Loud” did not copy Marvin Gaye’s 1973 classic “Let’s Get It On,” he hopes that his willingness to fight instead of settle helps other songwriters, though he admits it may take some time to change the current culture where such suits have “become a big money business,” he says.
“But the more that people step up and fight, the less it’s going to happen because the reason it has become a culture and a big money business is because of the threat of it. And so, people settle because they don’t want to spend a lot of money on lawyers and take time out,” he says. “I took time out of promoting my album two weeks, I spent a lot of money on lawyers to prove my innocence. And I think that if that happens more and more and more, it’ll just stop people thinking that they can just do a hit and run basically.”
On Monday (May 8), President Joe Biden announced his intent to nominate Deborah Robinson as the next Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (IPEC). The role was formed in 2008 as part of the Executive Office of the President and advises the president on U.S. intellectual property strategy.
Robinson most recently served as the head of intellectual property enforcement at Paramount Global (formerly ViacomCBS), but before that, she worked at the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for five years, protecting music rights. She also spent seven years as an assistant district attorney for Philadelphia.
Along with her strong history of employment in the entertainment business, Robinson serves as co-chair of the diversity committee of the IP section of the New York State Bar Association and as a Board Member of Aequitas, a non-profit focused on access and quality of justice in cases of human trafficking and gender-based violence.
Robinson would replace Vishal Amin, who was confirmed as IPEC under President Donald Trump and left the post in 2021. Since then, the position has been vacant, something pointed out by Congressman Adam Schiff and Mark Cohen — a distinguished senior fellow and director of Asia IP Project, Berkeley Center for Law and Technology — in a recent meeting for the Congressional subcommittee on courts, intellectual property, and the internet.
“RIAA applauds President Biden’s nomination of Deborah Robinson to serve as Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator,” said RIAA chairman/CEO Mitch Glazier in a statement. “Deborah is deeply qualified to serve our nation as IPEC and will bring unmatched policy depth and appreciation for the economic and cultural importance of strong IP enforcement to this vital role. Deborah will be an extremely welcome and effective addition to the Executive Office of the President, filling a position that has been vacant for the past three years and leading an exceptional team. We thank President Biden for selecting such an outstanding nominee to advance smart, pro-growth IP policies and enforcement practices around the world.”
“We welcome the nomination of Deborah Robinson to serve as the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (IPEC),” added NMPA president/CEO David Israelite. “Ms. Robinson brings incredible experience and insight to the role which serves an important function to spotlight and safeguard creator’s work across the globe. In addition to an extensive career as a prosecutor, she has held senior positions specifically in the field of music and copyright enforcement. We look forward to engaging with Ms. Robinson and supporting her important work once confirmed.”
A Manhattan federal jury on Thursday (May 4) cleared Ed Sheeran of allegations that his “Thinking Out Loud” infringed the copyright of Marvin Gaye’s famed “Let’s Get It On,” allowing the star to avoid millions in potential damages.
After a closely-watched trial before a packed courtroom, the seven-person jury issued a verdict that determined Sheeran had proved he didn’t infringe upon the copyright of the soul classic. Following the verdict, he briefly put his hands over his face in relief and hugged his lawyer, according to the Associated Press. As jurors left the courtroom, Sheeran quietly mouthed the words “thank you” in their direction. He then spoke for about 10 minutes with the plaintiffs, including the daughter of Ed Townsend, who co-created the 1973 soul classic with Gaye. They hugged and smiled with each other.
If he’d been found liable, Sheeran would have been facing millions in potential damages and could have been forced to change the credits on his song. After a jury verdict in 2015 that found Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams‘ megahit “Blurred Lines” had infringed Gaye’s “Got To Give It Up,” the two stars were ultimately ordered to pay a $5 million judgment, plus ongoing royalties from their song.
The verdict came nearly seven years after Sheeran was first sued by the heirs of Ed Townsend, Gaye’s longtime producer who co-wrote “Let’s Get It On,” over “Thinking Out Loud” — a commercial and critical success that hit No. 2 on the Hot 100 before winning the Grammy Award for song of the year. (Gaye’s actual heirs, who won the verdict over “Blurred Lines” are not involved in the case.)
In their suit, Kathryn Townsend Griffin and other heirs of Ed Townsend said Sheeran had “knowingly and intentionally infringed” the earlier tune, stealing the “heart” from one of the most “instantly recognizable songs in R&B history.”
The trial, taking place at the U.S. federal courthouse in Lower Manhattan, kicked off Tuesday with opening statements from both sides. Benjamin Crump, representing Griffin, told the jury to use their “common sense” to see that the pop star had stolen the “magic” from the earlier song. But Sheeran’s attorney, Ilene Farkas, said Griffin had not right to monopolize the “exceedingly common musical building blocks” featured in both songs. “Plaintiffs do not own them, because nobody does,” Farkas said. “All songwriters draw from this same basic toolkit.”
Later that same day, jurors then heard testimony from Sheeran himself, who strongly denied the allegations and insisted that he be allowed — over complaints from opposing attorneys — to offer additional context to defend his actions: “I feel like you don’t want me to answer because what I’m going to say is going to make quite a lot of sense,” Sheeran said.
One key piece of evidence during the trial was a video clip from a 2014 concert, in which Sheeran seamlessly switches from “Thinking” to “Lets” and back again, drawing huge cheers from the crowd. Crump called it a “smoking gun” against the star: “That concert video is a confession.”
But Sheeran and his lawyers said the video simply underscored the fact that he had done nothing wrong by using a basic set of chords that appear in many songs: “Quite frankly, if I’d done what you’re accusing me of, I’d be an idiot to stand up in front of 20,000 people and do that,” the singer said from the witness stand.
Later in the week, jurors heard testimony from Amy Wadge, who co-wrote “Thinking” with Sheeran (but isn’t named as a defendant), and Jake Gosling, who produced the song (also not named as a defendant). And both sides called their own musicologists — Lawrence Ferrara for Sheeran and Alexander Stewart for the Townsends — who offered dueling expert testimony about whether the similarities between the two tracks met the legal requirements for copyright infringement.
The Associated Press contributed reporting.
A federal judge in Georgia ordered the hip-hop mixtape site Spinrilla and its founder Jeffery Copeland to pay Universal Music, Warner Music, Sony Music and others $50 million for copyright infringement related to the streaming and downloading of thousands of songs by Bob Marley, Beyonce, Kendrick Lamar and more, according to a settlement agreement filed Wednesday.
As part of the agreement, Copeland is also permanently forbidden from operating Spinrilla or any other website, platform or similar projects anywhere in the world.
The settlement this week stems from a six-year-old lawsuit filed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on behalf of UMG, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Bros. Records, Atlantic Recording Corporation and LaFace Records, alleging that Spinrilla and Copeland allowed users to stream and download unlicensed content.
Copeland founded Spinrilla in early 2013 as an app for approved users to listen to and discover “independent and emerging hip-hop artists.” When the music industry filed its lawsuit, Spinrilla had 19 million users, including 14,000 who could upload content to the platform, and around 1.4 million songs available on the platform.
Over the course of the case, the RIAA said it identified more than 4,000 songs by Rihanna, Michael Jackson, Kanye West and others that were infringed, and in late 2020, U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg found Spinrilla liable for copyright infringement.
UMG, WMG, Sony Music Entertainment and Spinrilla did not respond to requests for comment.
As part of the agreement, Spinrilla will transfer the domain name for its service to the music industry companies, which they have agreed not to use.