INSIGHTS

Practice Group Insights

In the “Thinking Out Loud” case, the “Blurred Lines” case, and the similarly rooted “Stairway to Heaven” case, in which Led Zeppelin was accused of copying from another band, the juries were never allowed to hear any of the plaintiff’s original sound recordings. This is because the bounds of the plaintiffs’ asserted copyrights were limited to the material deposited with the U.S. Copyright Office, which in all three cases predated the protection of sound recordings and thus consisted only of sheet music. These cases remind all copyright owners that a deposit copy that does not fully capture the original elements of a creative work could weaken a future copyright infringement claim.

Many see the defendants’ wins in “Thinking Out Loud” and “Stairway to Heaven” to be a course correction from the plaintiffs’ earlier win in “Blurred Lines,” which the music industry criticized as opening the door for copyright claims based upon similarities in the overall “feel” or “groove” of two works, rather than the elements of the copyrighted works. However, music copyright cases are fact-specific, and the differing outcomes between “Blurred Lines” and “Thinking Out Loud” can be attributed partly to the unique factual circumstances and the unpredictable nature