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‘Blurred Lines’ lawyer confirms appeals will follow
By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 16 March 2015
A hot contender for least surprising development of the year, Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams’ legal man Howard King has told Fox he will appeal last week’s controversial ruling in which a jury decided the terrible twosome had lifted elements of Marvin Gaye’s ‘Got To Give It Up’ for their hit ‘Blurred Lines’.
As previously reported, Thicke and Williams were ordered to pay over $7.3 million to the Gaye family in damages, and lawyers for the latter are now pushing to have distribution of ‘Lines’ stopped until a deal can be done on future royalties.
Many have mused on what precedent the ruling sets, given the argument presented by King in court that any elements ‘Got To Give It Up’ and ‘Blurred Lines’ have in common are just common elements of pop music in general, and can be found in many songs.
Some reckon that makes this a dangerous ruling that will impact on the art of pop-making if it is allowed to stand, though it’s true that pursuing copyright infringement litigation of this kind remains risky and expensive, meaning it is only really viable to go fully legal if the rip off record is worth a lot of money, and few hits from the last ten years have been as lucrative as ‘Blurred Lines’.
But nevertheless, King says that “we owe it to songwriters around the world to make sure this verdict doesn’t stand”. Speaking to Fox Business News, he went on: “My clients know that they wrote the song ‘Blurred Lines’ from their hearts and souls and no other source. We are going to exercise every post trial remedy we have to make sure this verdict does not stand. We look at it as being in the seventh inning of a game that could go into extra innings”.
That’s a baseball reference there, by the way. I’d explain it, but I bet you’d rather read a fabric-based simile for the ‘Blurred Lines’ case wouldn’t you? And King has one of them too.
“If this is the way the law is going to go”, he said of last week’s ruling. “Then the creator of rayon better look behind him for lawsuits from the owners of silk, because, even though they feel the same they are structurally, completely different, just like these songs”.
