Coldplay lawsuit raises questions about music copyright

Updated December 11, 2008 08:40:00

Audio: Coldplay in copyright case (PM)
Related Story: Coldplay deny plagiarism allegations

Is it theft, borrowing, unconscious plagiarism or sheer coincidence? The multimillion album selling rock band Coldplay is being taken to court over allegations it pinched a tune by US guitarist Joe Satriani.

Satriani claims British band Coldplay's song Viva la Vida is a direct rip-off of his melody If I Could Fly and he wants any and all profits from the Coldplay hit.

But Coldplay says any similarities are pure coincidence.

For Satriani, If I Could Fly was a love letter to his wife, a song that took him more than a decade to compose before it was finally recorded in 2004.

For Coldplay, Viva la Vida, released this year, has earned them a handful Grammy nominations and now legal action in a Californian court.

Satriani has been quoted as saying he heard his song in Coldplay's hit single in an instant.

"I felt like a dagger went right through my heart. It hurt so much. The second I heard it, I knew it was my own, If I Could Fly," he said.


"I mean, I couldn't tell you how many e-mails I received. Everybody noticed the similarities between the songs. It's pretty obvious."

The two songs have been overlayed on the video sharing website YouTube just to prove the point. Coldplay says any similarity is entirely coincidental and that Satriani did not write or have any influence on their song.

Regardless, Satriani's legal team claims a substantial portion of the song has been copied and they are pursuing any and all of the profits from the Coldplay chart-topper.

Music critic with the Sydney Morning Herald Bruce Elder says proving a copyright breach is fraught for musicians - big and small.

"Somebody who is a relatively small fish in the grand scheme of things is saying to a very, very big fish you have taken what rightfully belongs to me and I want some kind of recompense," he said.

"It is almost impossible to define what constitutes plagiarism in music, particularly in popular music, because there are so many songs that are very similar.

"I mean all you have to do is listen to a very old classic which is the Archies' Sugar, Sugar and I believe that the chord progression in Sugar, Sugar has been used in something like 20 or 30 other pop songs."

'Subconscious' copyright

But when it comes to other pop songs, copying is nothing new.

Perhaps most famously, the Beatles' George Harrison was forced to pay almost $1 million in royalties after a court found he had subconsciously copied The Chiffons's He's So Fine.

And eyebrows were raised at the similarities between the opening bass line bars of The Jam's song Start and the Beatles' Taxman, but in that case The Jam's Paul Weller admitted to being under the influence of the Beatles.

Copyright Lawyer Michael Easton from Brett Oaten Solicitors explains how damages might be assessed in the Coldplay case.

"[You need to assess if] there's any kind of culpability on the defendant's part. So if it's agreed that they subconsciously infringed then that might be something that reduces damages," he said.

"But you'd also look at things like the extent to which the market for the original work's been affected and what kind of profits the defendant made as a result of the infringement.

"Another aspect which is often significant in these cases is looking at the likelihood that the writer, the defendant, was exposed to the original song. So the question might come down to a case of whether [singer] Chris Martin has a Joe Satriani album in his collection."

And that makes composing increasingly tricky for artists, says Elder.

"The average musician is a fairly nerdy kind of person who is very, very interested in music and listens to a lot of it and presumably have a vast amount of music swimming around in their head," he said.

"And if this is the case, they can often stumble on something and say, well I don't know where I got that but it sounds pretty good and I'm going to make a song out of it.

"If there is some kind of huge settlement in favour of Joe Satriani, then it really does create a situation where other writers are going to be saying 'I wonder whether I'm plagiarising something. 'How am I going to prove to people that I haven't been plagiarising this?'."

Based on a report by Emily Bourke for PM on December 10, 2008.

Topics: music, arts-and-entertainment, law-crime-and-justice, laws, united-kingdom, united-states

First posted December 10, 2008 22:00:00