Pharrell Williams & Robin Thicke To Settle $7.4 Million To Marvin Gaye’s Family For Copyright Infringement

March 11, 2015

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Ordered by the Jury,Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke to give up $7.4million to the late Marvin Gaye’s family for copyright infringement. In 2013,Gaye’s children – Nona, Frankie and Marvin Gaye III – sued the singers $40 million for damages and then lowered it to $25million. They were also present when the verdict was read. After the verdict, Nona said;

‘Right now, I feel free,’ ‘Free from … Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke’s chains and what they tried to keep on us and the lies that were told.’

Please what can you say about this? Can you tell The blurred line song was copied from the late Mavin’s ‘got to give it up’? According to dailymail after the cut…

Pharrell Williams & Robin Thicke To Settle .4 Million To Marvin Gaye's Family For Copyright Infringement

The Gayes’ lawyer branded Pharrell and Thicke liars who went beyond trying to emulate the sound of Gaye’s late-1970s music and copied the R&B legend’s hit Got to Give It Up outright.He also brought up the fact after the verdict that the defense’s legal team did everything they could to stop the jury from hearing Gaye’s song during the proceedings, allowing them to just listen to certain snippets of the music. For this reason the infringement charge only applied to the sheet music for the two songs, making the case against Thicke and Pharrell that much more difficult for the Gaye family. Busch however pointed out during his argument that Thicke said in interviews while promoting the single that he and Pharrell were trying to write something like Gaye’s Got to Give It Up.
‘The biggest hit of my career was written by somebody else, and I was jealous and wanted credit,’ said Thicke.
He also took time on the stand to play a variety of songs that sound similar in music and tone in an attempt to strengthen his case
Pharrell told jurors that Gaye’s music was part of the soundtrack of his youth, but the seven-time Grammy winner said he didn’t use any of it to create Blurred Lines and that the songs were alike in genre only.
The pair’s lawyer maintained their innocence even after the verdict, saying; ‘They’re unwavering in their absolute conviction that they wrote this song independently.’

Thicke told jurors he didn’t write Blurred Lines, which Pharrell testified he crafted in about an hour in mid-2012, as he was too high on painkillers and alcohol.

I have another question; what if the song ‘blurred lines’ was not a hit? Would there be a case?