Ed Sheeran just won his copyright infringement case, with jury finding that his song "Thinking Out Loud" did not infringe on the copyright of "Let's Get It On" by Marvin Gaye.
In 1976, when George Harrison lost a copyright lawsuit against him, with the court holding that his 1970 hit "My Sweet Lord" infringed on the copyright on the 1963 Chiffons hit "He's So Fine," he turned his guitar on the legal system.
After he lost the case (but before the protracted damages portion would be concluded, in 1998!) he released the satirical song "This Song" about his legal and courtroom experience.
He also directed a video for the song, which was played on Saturday Night Live at the time.
The video has George Harrison hauled into a surreal courtroom, then testifying:
"This song has nothing tricky about it,
This song ain't black or white and as far as I know,
Don't infringe on anyone's copyright, so…"
That's Harrison pal Eric Idle (in the recording, not in the video) in full Monty Python old-lady voice, complaining that the song sounds like "[I Can't Help Myself] Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch."
The song's line "This tune has nothing bright about it" seems innocuous enough, but it's a reference to the owner of the copyright to "He's So Fine," Bright Tunes Music. The case might have been settled out of court, but during the proceedings, Harrison and fellow ex-Beatles John Lennon and Ringo Starr fired their manager Allen Klein, who then negotiated to buy Bright Tunes Music, and using inside knowledge of the song's sales and value, pushed for higher damages.
The court later reduced the damages awarded, because of Klein's duplicity and breach of his fiduciary duty to Harrison. What a mess.
And the line "As this song came to me, Unknowingly" has significance, as one of Harrison's defenses was that he didn't copy the song purposefully. In one of the legally important aspects of the case, the court ruled that this didn't matter – Harrison had admitted that he'd heard "He's So Fine," and so even if he copied it subconsciously, it's still an infringement.
By the way, John Lennon didn't exactly leap to his former bandmate's defense. In a 1980 Playboy interview, Lennon expressed doubt that Harrison's copying of the "He's So Fine" was subconscious:
"He must have known, you know. He's smarter than that … He could have changed a couple of bars in that song and nobody could ever have touched him, but he just let it go and paid the price. Maybe he thought God would just sort of let him off."
Here's a comparison of the songs "My Sweet Lord" and He's So Fine." While the crux of the case against Sheeran seemed to be that the two songs in question shared the same, very common, backing four-chord progression, the judge in the "My Sweet Lord"/"He's So Fine" case, who was an amateur musical composer, said that the actual melodies "are the very same song."
