united-states civil-law
How does the court distinguish between plagiarism and inspiration in songs?
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JL4JXEv-RY" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JL4JXEv-RY</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqqq8uqSDnk" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqqq8uqSDnk</a></p>
<p>How does the court distinguish between plagiarism and inspiration in songs? I heard these two and I found they sounded very similar, but weren't completely the same. Is there a set of criteria we can use to judge if a song was plagiarizing another rather than taking inspiration from another song? Does the law allow a composer to heavily borrow from another song without being subject to a lawsuit in the United States?</p>

<p>First of all, &quot;plagiarism&quot; is more of an academic than a legal term. It means using another's work without proper credit, and particularly in a way that falsely makes it appear to be ones own work. This is severely criticized in academic and journalistic circles, and may result i a person losing a job or being expelled from a degree program, but it is not in and of itself a legal issue.</p>
<p>What a court is concerned with is <em><strong>copyright infringement</strong></em>. Some things are plagiarism but not copyright infringement. For example, copying without acknowledgement from a work written two hundred years ago might well be plagiarism , but would not be infringement because the soruce is not protected by copyright.</p>
<p>i can, for example copy from the music of Bach all that I want, because it is long out of copyright.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if I copy a recent work without permission but properly attribute my source, it is not plagiarism, but may well be copyright infringement.</p>
<p>When faced with a claim of copyright infringement, a US Federal court will look at several things.</p>
<p>First of all, it will check if the copyright has been registered within eh copyright office. Under US law, one must registered before bringing a copyright suit. If there has been no registration, the suit will be dismissed.</p>
<p>The court will also consider evidence of similarity, unless the defendant admits copying. Usually if this is disputed there will be expert testimony that the similarity is so great that simple coincidence cannot explain it. Thsi will consider the notes, the duration of each tone, rhythm, chords, keys, and other musical elements. To establish copying there should normally be a significant similarity over an extended passage at least. I have read of cases where similarity of a passage 35 notes long was enough to m establish copying. But there is not clear cut rule on this.  A passage just a few notes long could be identical by accidental recreation, and will not generally prove copying.</p>
<p>The court will also consider evidence of access. The plaintiff will often introduce evidence showing that the alleged infringer had access to a copy of the source work. This is not absolutely essential, but is very helpful to the plaintiff's case.</p>
<p>The court can also consider claims of common source. If the defendant says that the allegedly infringing work was in fact based on an older work now out of copyright, which the plaintiff's work was also based on, that would tend to defeat a claim of infringement.</p>
<p>The court might also consider claims that the alleged source work was not in fact original and should not have copyright protection.</p>
<p>And if the defendant admits copying, but claims that this was a fair use of the source work, the court will analyze the statutory dour factors, and possibly other relevant factors to determent whether this is valid fair use or not. This is where claims of &quot;influence&quot; tend to be resolved. There is no clear cut set of criteria for how much copying is allowed.</p>
<p>I have not followed the links, because I am not a musical expert and my judgement of the degree of similarity would not be meaningful, and even if it were, the degree of similarity alone would not prove whether there has been infringement.</p>
<p>Note that it is also possible that one of these composers has actually gotten permission from the other, perhaps in return for a fee, to use  part of the other's work. In that case there would be no infringement, as long as there was permission.</p>
<p>The book <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Life_in_Court" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><em>My Life in Court</em></a> by Louis Nizer has a detailed description of a successful suit for infringement of a copyrighted song, the so-called &quot;rum and coca-cola&quot; case (<em>Baron v. Leo Feist</em>). The book describes in detail the evidence presented by plaintiff and defendant.</p>
<p>See also the <a href="https://blogs.law.gwu.edu/mcir/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Music Copyright Infringement Resource</a> provided by The George Washington University Law School &amp; Columbia Law School, which lists many cases of alleged copyright infringement of music, from 1844 to 2021, giving results and excerpts of court opinions as well as other information about each case.</p>

<p>They don't. Plagiarism is not a concept of law.</p>
<p>Courts decide if one song is <strong>copyright infringement</strong> on another. Or rather, they employ a finder of facts, aka a <em>petit jury</em>, that listens to witnesses and experts of both sides giving testimony and showing evidence. Then it decides upon if it is or isn't. In the case of a bench trial, there is no jury and instead, the judge is the decider of facts.</p>
