Example Case - See You In Court
The Case
The fifth version adds the final instrumental ingredient from the Original Work – the string parts, most evident in the chorus with its high descant line.
Case for infringement
The existing song here again introduces a large amount of original melodic material, which adds considerably to the final result. High orchestral strings add polish and panache to popular music, particularly of the disco genre. Copying them note for note here in the new song adds further examples of clear infringement, and would also be relied upon by musicologists representing the claimant.
Although the original melody and lyrics have not been copied, there is a substantial enough element of the existing song present in step five of the new song to prove that copying is blatant, as in the Mood Music and Warner/de Wilde cases. By this stage the existing song should be easily identifiable as being Abba’s Dancing Queen, which was released in 1976.
Case against infringement
It is hard to find any defence against this level of copying from the existing work, other than the parody defence discussed in step four. Most infringement cases are won or lost on the amount of borrowing in the melody, and clearly there is no borrowing here.
Score Comparisons
The example below compares the two melody lines and illustrates that, whilst the melody and lyrics of the new song are entirely different (other than perhaps a melodic similarity in bars five and six), the accompaniment and chord structures are identical.
Dancing Queen
(Benny Andersson/Bjorn Ulvaeus/Stig Anderson) © Bocu Music Ltd. Recording ℗ Tency Music, France. Please note that this is not the original Abba recording.
See You In Court
(Simon Anderson) ©and ℗ 2015, Simon Anderson. Please note that copyright is only claimed in the original elements of See You In Court, and not in the elements that have been reproduced from the existing song for the purposes of this case study.
13%
Safe
86%
Infringing
Our Summary
This case study demonstrates that what begins as a ‘safe’ and legal piece of original music gradually becomes more ‘risky’ and contentious with the addition of non-original elements, and eventually becomes an infringing work when non-original melodies are introduced. Any of the five versions could potentially be challenged by the owners of the existing song. It has been proposed in this study that the first three versions would be found not to infringe, in spite of admitting to incorporating some non-copyrightable elements of the existing song.
Legal note and acknowledgements
All sound recordings of the elements of the existing song are produced and licensed by Tency Music, France, and have been purchased and downloaded from their website.
All compositional elements of the existing song, Dancing Queen, composed by Benny Andersson, Bjorn Ulvaeus and Stig Anderson, are the copyright of Bocu Music Ltd in the UK. All compositional and sound recording elements of the new song were created by and are the copyright of Simon Anderson. The case study has been produced for non-commercial research purposes under the Fair Dealing exemption of the 1988 CDPA, s. 29.