Re: Quoting Song Lyrics in Fiction (Australian Law)?

On Mon, 1 Mar 1999, Derric Oliver <doliver[_at_]jazz.fantasyjazz.com> wrote:
>
> I encountered a situation in which a songwriter claimed that a new (and
> platinum-selling) song infringed on the writer's pre-existing work.
> After listening to both, it was clear that the musical note sequence of
> the two were nearly identical (the tempo and musical genre were quite
> similar as well). However, a musicologist opined that although the
> pitch sequence similarity was undeniable, the metric stress differences
> between the two songs was sufficient to warrant copyright protection for
> both.

That doesn't answer the question of whether work #2 infringed work #1. Any derivative work is independently eligible for copyright but is still "dominated" (to borrow a patent term) by the original such that without permission, it infringes.

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