Music copyright awards must wake up DJs thriving on remix

Recent findings on disputes in the entertainment industry brought to the fore the rights granted to entertainers who have secured copyrights over their works.

For a copyright to be granted, the work must be shown to be new, original and must have been reduced into a fixed format. A lot of times in the bid to be more creative, artists may end up copying part or whole work.

However, what many artists do not know is that it is actionable to do this without the consent of the previous owner of the work so long as the previous work had been protected. Leading case law is highlighted to show this.

In the most recent case pitting award winning singer Pharrell Williams and Robert Thicke versus the estate of Marvin Gaye, the song Blurred Lines became a subject of a dispute between the two sides.

The estate of Gaye was awarded $7.2 million (Sh655 million). The issue in dispute was the musical composition of the song and it was found that the same as well as the keyboard line, the bass and the hook and theme Got To Give It Up owned by Marvin Gaye, were repeated in the song Blurred Lines.

This decision shows that a song has many elements to it and one of the elements of a song is the sound recording which is typically owned by the performer and the recording studio.

The musical composition and the lyrics as well as the sheet music should be owned by the composer where a performer records a song composed by someone else.

A composer has a right to be named as the composer and also is entitled to monetary benefit. It is common in the music industry for a particular music composition, for example beats, to be applied by several singers in different recordings.

In other cases, disco jockeys (DJs) do re-mixes of songs by taking a particular musical composition and apply it in a different song.

These DJs then resell their remixes. In my view and as the case of Pharrell Williams shows, such steps are actionable if the musical composition is protected and where the DJ makes money out of doing the remixes.

Another leading case in the entertainment industry was between Vanilla Ice and David Bowie over the song Ice Ice Baby recorded by the former. Vanilla Ice had used a beat that had been composed by the latter and in as much as the lyrics were original, he agreed to settle the matter out of court.

The issue in dispute was the beat of the song. It was argued that David Bowie was entitled to some credit rights for the beats.

Michael Bolton also found himself in a dispute with the Isley Brothers over the song Love Is A Wonderful Thing. What was in dispute was the title of the song and the lyrics.

The Isley Brothers released their song before Michael Bolton. The court found in favour of the Isley Brothers who were given a handsome award of $5.4 million, which made up 66 per cent of Michael Bolton’s future royalties in the album that contained the song.

What a huge price to pay for using similar lyrics and similar title to the song!

Michael Jackson and Rihanna found themselves in a dispute with Manu Dibango for their songs Wanna Be Starting Something and Don’t Stop The Music respectively. The issue was the inclusion of some words from Dibango’s song Soul Makossa. The disputes were settled out of court.

A person who has copyright over his works is entitled to moral rights — the right to be named as the owner of such works where the intent is to reuse. He is also entitled to economic rights and that is, compensation for earnings made out of unauthorised use.

Mputhia is the Founder of C M Advocates. [email protected] — www.cmadvocates.co.ke