Copyright Cases have become more prevalent in recent years with more high-profile cases. Such as the Katy Perry Dark Horse case and the ongoing Led Zeppelin case. This arises the question of why?
Firstly, lets cover what Copyright is concerning songs. When a song has been created and documented or recorded it becomes copyright protected. To document this, there needs to be a way of producing a date of when it was created, so that you have copyright protection from that date for the next 70 Years. The most common methods of this are mailing the song to yourself, or have some form of time record by emailing the song to yourself. Once this has been fulfilled you have the sole authority to copy, licence, perform and broadcast your work as you now have copyright rights for that work.
These rights are important, as they allow you as the owner to do what you want with the work you created. As well as this, in the result of an infringement you are able to claim compensation for the damage of reputation you might have face, or obtain a percentage of royalties from the infringing song.
What happens when someone has a song which is similar or identical to your song?
Firstly, you need to get in touch with a law firm who can act on your behalf to take legal action so they can try to obtain a settlement which best suits your needs/preferences and if it comes to it litigation. A settlement is a way to negotiate with the offending party, so that you come to an amicable agreement regarding royalties for licencing and being given writing credits. If this amicable agreement can not take place and they deny that they have used your work, legal action is the only route where the court can decide whether they have infringed your copyright rights or not.
There is a fine line with music copyright infringement, which is the result of the law allowing people to use someone else’s song if they are modified to the extent that they are unrecognisable to the ear. If they do not satisfy this requirement, they must obtain permission from the artist. Anything else it is for the court to decide whether it is distinct enough from the claimant’s original work.
It seems that more and more relatively unknown artists are using their copyright rights to obtain huge financial settlements from well-known artists, if they find that there are similarities between their works. However, there is an exception if an artist is so unknown that the popular infringing artist would never have heard their song, then they wouldn’t be infringing their copyright.
Written by Owen White Third Year Law Student at Solent University
