ABSTRACT
Many popular songwriters, recording artists, and bands – including Katy Perry, Juicy J, Pharrell Williams, Robin Thicke, and Led Zeppelin – find themselves involved in disputes over the copyrights in their musical compositions and sound recordings. Arguments arise over melody, lyrics, harmony, pitch, rhythm, tempo, tone, phrasing, and other musical elements in music copyright infringement matters. But which elements are actually protected under copyright law and which are so commonly used in the general creation of music that they are unprotectible? This is the difficult idea-expression dichotomy question that numerous courts are tasked with answering. This case note explores the idea-expression dichotomy in the context of music copyright infringement by taking a close look at the decision of the Central District of California in Gray v Perry and the influential and related decisions of the Ninth Circuit in Williams v Gaye and Skidmore v Led Zeppelin. This case note examines how the courts decided which musical elements are protected under music copyright law and references decisions from different circuits that have wrestled with the same question: which musical elements are original expression and subject to copyright protection and which are tantamount to ideas that cannot be protected.
Marisa C Schutz, Is Gray v Perry The One That Got Away? The Idea-Expression Dichotomy and Music Copyright Infringement, 20 UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law 290 (2021).
First posted 2021-04-24 16:15:45
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