BY TER STAFF
A jury today found that Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams got to give it up (it being roughly $7.4 million dollars), as they decided that Thicke and Pharrell’s track ‘Blurred Lines’ infringed upon Marvin Gaye’s 1977 ‘Got To Give It Up’ record. After weeks in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, the jurors awarded over $4 million in damages to the Gaye family, deciding that the infringement was not innocent (but also not willful). A crucial piece of evidence were interviews of Thicke and Williams saying they were inspired by Marvin Gaye and that they wanted to channel Gaye’s ‘Got to Give It Up’. Today may not only be a big loss for Thicke and Pharrell’s bank accounts but also for producers everywhere who want to blur the line between permissible and impermissible sampling of records. Compare the two tracks below.
The Early Registration 