Subconscious Plagiarism, George Harrison and Robin Thicke

 You guys remember George Harrison, right.  The former Beatle.  In 1970 he released his first solo album, “All Things Must Pass”.  A triple album in fact.  Hands down for me at least was his hit track “My Sweet Lord”, otherwise known to rock afficionados as the “Hare Krishna” song.  The song topped charts worldwide and according to Wikipedia, was the biggest-selling single of 1971 in the UK.  Harrison was sued for copyright infringement due to the similarity between his song and the Ronnie Mack song “He’s So Fine”, a 1963 hit by the Chiffons. To the untrained ear, the songs seemed to be substantially different.  But to the Judge who authored the opinion in the lawsuit, Harrison was found to have infringed upon the copyright.  More shocking than that to me was that the court concluded that Harrison did it subconsciously.  Seriously.  Unfortunately for Harrison, it was still considered infringement.  When you think about it, that is a very scary proposition for a musician.
I read the opinion and understand how the Judge came to his conclusion.  But for the subconscious plagiarism part, I agreed with it.  What cemented the infringement for me was a YouTube video which played both songs at the same time, synched together. After hearing that, there was no doubt in my mind that this was no coincidence.  I don’t know how you could conclude this was subconscious plagiarism after listening to the two tunes synched together.
Cut to March of 2015.  That was when Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams lost big at a copyright infringement trial and were ordered to pay $7.3 million dollars in damages to Marvin Gaye’s estate.  The infringing tune was their 2013 smash hit, “Blurred Lines”, which was found to have infringed upon Marvin Gaye’s 1977 hit “Got to Give It Up”.  Unfortunately for Thicke and unlike Harrison, in response to attempts to illustrate how songs could have similar chord progressions and still sound different, interviews were shown where Thicke mentioned Gaye directly, including several where Thicke specifically cited “Got to Give It Up”.  Williams claimed he was “trying to pretend” he was the Motown legend as he wrote the track.  So much for subconscious plagiarism.
Who said the law was boring?
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