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Apportioning copyright damages: the case of ‘Blurred Lines’

2015; Oxford University Press; Volume: 10; Issue: 12 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/jiplp/jpv175

1747-1540

Doug Bania,

Digital Rights Management and Security

Using data collected by the author's firm as consultants in the recent ‘Blurred Lines’ case, in which the family of Marvin Gaye, Jr accused Pharrell Williams, Robin Thicke and Clifford Harris, Jr of infringing musical elements of Gaye's ‘Got to Give It Up’, this article addresses the relatively neglected issue of the apportionment of value that is directly attributable to an intellectual property asset. Such apportionment is particularly complex in the case of recorded music, which may include multiple copyright holders and requires two steps described in the article. The first is determining what portion of the copyright to a work is relevant to charges of infringement; the second is determining the multiple factors that contribute to the financial success of that work. The author argues that in this case, in which the supposedly infringed musical elements are covered by only half of one of the two relevant copyrights and in which much of the song's value is demonstrably attributable to non-copyright factors, considerably less than a quarter of the value of the ‘Blurred Lines’ could rightfully be attributed to the contested elements protected by Gaye's copyright.