All right. In order to prove a copyright infringement the owner of the copyright has to prove that his work’s been copied and also that the defendant’s work is what’s called substantially similar to the plaintiff’s work. So two important points here. Firstly, if someone has created a musical composition and you create even the identical musical composition, but you have never seen or heard the other one, you haven’t infringed the copyright. The copyright only protects against copying not against independently creating something, which even if it might be quite similar. Second important point is that in order to infringe someone else’s copyright, you’re work only has to be what’s called substantially similar. It doesn’t have to be an identical copy. Right, so if a court finds that it’s similar enough by whatever substantially similar means and courts have gone and back and forth about what it means and have basically admitted that it’s sort of if the audience senses that the defendant’s work as the same appeal, the same overall concept from the original, it could be held to be substantially similar. So again, your work doesn’t have to be an exact copy. It only has to be substantially similar.

In addition, there a couple of cases that hold – one involving George Harrison and The Chiffon song – a copyright infringement action alleging that George Harrison’s My Sweet Lord infringed He’s So Fine by The Chiffons. And courts have held in that case as well as others that even unconscious copying is – counts as copying for purposes of copyright law. So even though – if you independently create something and don’t copy, it’s not an infringement. If you copy something, but you’re not aware of the fact that you’ve copied, that can be the basis for copyright infringement, which is very difficult for musicians because in the Harrison case as well as other cases where courts have looked at to determine whether or not the defendant is likely to have unconsciously copied is whether or not the defendant is likely to have heard the song. So in the case of George Harrison, the court said, “Well, listen. You know, this song – The Chiffons song was a major hit. George Harrison is a musician. He must have heard the song.” And the a expert in music testified that the two songs had a lot of similarity even if some people don’t hear the similarity when they listen to the songs. So therefore George Harrison must have copied the tune even if he was not aware of it.

[End of Audio]