Lay Listeners, Sheet Music, & Chord Progressions: The Future of Copyright Infringement Analysis in Music

In August 2019, a jury awarded a little-known songwriter $2.8 million in damages for copyright infringement. The alleged infringement involves four notes from Katy Perry’s hit song “Dark Horse.” The verdict can be viewed as a victory for the little guy—a Christian rapper who, pre-internet, would have struggled to show access, a required component of illegal copying. It can alternately be viewed as a dangerous precedent, opening the door for copyright trolls and deterring creation.

In 2017, Silicon Flatirons hosted a conference focused on the recently decided Blurred Lines case, in which Marvin Gaye’s estate secured a multi-million-dollar copyright infringement judgment against songwriters and recording artists, Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke. Since that time, dozens of similar lawsuits have accused artists­—ranging from Ed Sheeran to Led Zeppelin to Lady Gaga—of unauthorized copying of others’ songs. Some of these cases have settled with few publicly-available details. Others have gone to trial with juries ultimately awarding millions of dollars in damages.

Join Silicon Flatirons at CU Boulder for their sixth annual content conference where they will welcome back some familiar faces, and new experts, to ask: Is this a good development? Are juries getting these “substantial similarity” cases right? If so, how do we know? If not, what are some alternative ways to handle these types of cases?

Find more information and register: Here