Fresh from winning their case against Pharrell Williams, Robin Thicke and TI for copyright infringement – and being awarded $7.4m in the process – the family of Marvin Gaye appear to have decided to take a look at the rest of Williams’s catalogue.
The next song in their sights is another huge global hit, one that will likely have generated enormous amounts of revenue after more than 10m sales. “I’m not going to lie. I do think they sound alike,” Gaye’s daughter Nona told CBS News of the similarities between Williams’s worldwide smash Happy and Gaye’s 1966 song Ain’t That Peculiar.
“I heard the mash-ups – but I didn’t really need to hear them,” said Gaye’s ex-wife Janis. “I know Ain’t That Peculiar and I’ve heard Happy.”
However, they are not yet contemplating further legal action. “We’re not in that that space,” Janis said. “We’re just in the moment today and we’re satisfied.”
Howard King, the lawyer who acted for Williams, Thicke and TI, issued a statement to Billboard about his clients’ reaction to their loss in the Blurred Lines case.
“My clients and I are understandably disappointed in the jury’s verdict, especially given their absolute conviction that Blurred Lines came from the hearts and souls of Pharrell Williams, Robin Thicke and TI, and no other place,” he said. “Should the verdict be allowed to stand, a terrible precedent will have been established that will deter the record labels that fund new music from getting involved with creations built on the shoulders of other composers. No longer will it be safe to create music in the same style or genre of a prior song.”
He continued: “There was no properly admissible evidence upon which the jury could have found copying. A comparison of the two songs readily reveals that there isn’t one note in the melody that’s the same, there isn’t one chord in the entire song that’s the same, and there are no more than three notes in the bass lines, out of 26 notes, that are the same.”
He added that “this matter is not finished by any stretch of the imagination”.
