Law and Innovation

Fresh and interesting article posted on the IPKat  concerning the Los Angeles jury's decision on March 10, 2015 determining that Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke had copied several elements from Marvin Gaye’s 1977 song “Got to Give It Up” with the “Blurred Lines" hit of 2013. Happy reading!  " What with Kats scattering in all directions   to cover so many exciting developments, it's always good to know that the IPKat, Merpel and the blogging team have friends on whom they can rely.  One such friend is occasional guest blogger   Dorothea Thompson , once upon a time a trade mark attorney but now recycled at London-based law firm Bray & Krais. Dorothea has penned this little piece on a recent piece of US litigation that has become a global smash-hit: Blurred Lines in focus Just in case IPKat readers have lived a media-free life in the past 48 hours: on Tuesday an eight-member jury unanimously found that Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams ’...

Fresh and interesting article posted on BBC News concerning Shakira's song “Loca’’ which contains, according Judge Alvin Hellerstein, segments that were clearly copied from Dominican artist Ramon Arias Vasquez’s “Loca con su Tiguere” from the late 1990s. Happy reading! "A hit song performed by Colombian pop star Shakira was indirectly copied from another songwriter's work, a federal judge in New York has found.   Judge Alvin Hellerstein said Shakira's Spanish-language version of Loca in 2010 had infringed on a song by Dominican singer Ramon Arias Vazquez. Her English language version of Loca - which featured Dizzee Rascal - was "not offered into evidence" at the trial.  Neither version of Loca was released as a single in the UK. However, the Spanish language version - a collaboration with Dominican rapper Eduard Edwin Bello Pou, better known as El Cata - was widely released as a single around the world. It went on to sell more t...

New interesting research provides empirical evidence that file sharing did not reduce the creation of new hit songs. Instead, MORE NEW MUSIC entered the hit charts, an effect that’s driven by existing artists. The research is available at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2372630 Follow me on Twitter   @tdubuisson or check my professional profile on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasdubuisson