Copyright infringement is what's called a "strict liability tort," which means the defendant doesn't have to have intended to infringe to be found guilty. To prove guilt, the plaintiff must only demonstrate that the defendant had access to the allegedly infringed song, and that the two songs in question have substantial similarity.
Access is a question of whether the defendant ever actually heard, or could reasonably be presumed to have heard, the plaintiff's song at some point before creating the allegedly infringing song. Though not always easy to prove, courts often consider whether a relationship existed between the two parties and how well known the plaintiff's song is generally.
In the famous 1976 case
Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music, the late Beatles member George Harrison was found to have infringed on The Chiffon's hit "
He's So Fine" with his own solo song "
My Sweet Lord" in part because The Chiffons song was so popular that there was little doubt whether Harrison had been exposed to it. The judge concluded that even though there was no evidence that "He's So Fine" had been on Harrison's radar, he had likely heard the song and internalized it "subconsciously."
In the case of Robin Thicke and "
Blurred Lines," by contrast, there was never any question of access, since Thicke admitted on his own that his song was inspired by Marvin Gaye's "
Got to Give It Up."
Substantial similarity is a question of whether or not the average listener can tell that one song has been copied from the other. This is the "ordinary observer test," what Fakler calls "the hallmark of copyright infringement." The more elements two works have in common, the more likely they are to be ruled substantially similar. Proving substantial similarity in music cases is complicated by the fact that all songs carry two kinds of copyright, for composition and sound recording, that have to be evaluated independently.
"When people usually encounter a song they encounter it as a sound recording, and there are a lot of creative decisions the performer made in that recording that have added to what was on the page," Fakler said. "So a juror might hear similarities between two songs that are actually just similarities in the performances, not in the songs as written by the songwriter."
To avoid this problem, the judge on the "Blurred Lines" case ordered that only
stripped-down tracks, restricted to disputed elements of the original compositions, could be played in court.
Though barred from playing "Blurred Lines," Thicke
took to the witness stand with a keyboard and played other compositions, while dancing in his seat, to demonstrate how many songs, including Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror" and The Beatles' "Let It Be," share certain elements in common. The tactic echoed a similar move by John Fogerty in the famous case of
Fogerty v. Fantasy, in which the Credence Clearwater Revival singer-songwriter was accused of plagiarizing himself. (A song that Fogerty wrote as a solo artist, "
The Old Man Down the Road," was alleged by his old record label to infringe on a song he had written as a member of CCR, "
Run Through the Jungle.")
Fogerty won over the jury by bringing his guitar to the witness stand and personally demonstrating why the two songs were different.
"I'm always kind of amused that judges let that sort of thing happen in court, because you can really manipulate the song when you're a performer," said Fakler. "To a certain degree, it's like O.J. Simpson with the glove."