Robin Thicke and Pharrell lose first round in Blurred Lines copyright battle

Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams have lost the first round in their court battle with Marvin Gaye’s family. Judge John Kronstadt denied the musicians’ motion for summary judgment, ruling that Blurred Lines’s similarities to Gaye’s Got to Give It Up are sufficient for trial.

Lawyers for the Gaye family “have made a sufficient showing that elements of Blurred Lines may be substantially similar to protected, original elements of Got to Give It Up”, Kronstadt wrote on Thursday, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The judge also pointed in particular to the “substantial similarity” of the two songs’ “signature phrases, hooks, basslines, keyboard chords, harmonic structures and vocal melodies”. Even though the musical essence of Got to Give It Up can be reduced to very small parts – a four-note hook, four-note vocal melody and 16-bar harmonic structure – these may indeed represent “protectable expressions”.

The Blurred Lines performers were themselves the ones to initiate court proceedings: they filed a preemptive lawsuit in August 2013, following legal contact from the Gaye family alleging infringement of Got to Give It Up. Gaye’s reps later presented a countersuit and also alleged infringement regarding a second song, Thicke’s Love After War, which they said copied Gaye’s After the Dance.

Part of the proceedings have focused on Thicke’s comments in a May 2013 GQ interview, where he claimed that Blurred Lines came out of admiration for the track. “Pharrell and I were in the studio and I told him that one of my favorite songs of all time was Marvin Gaye’s Got to Give It Up. I was like, ‘Damn, we should make something like that, something with that groove,’” he told the GQ reporter.

According to court documents made public in September, Thicke claims he was inebriated throughout the period of the song’s release. “I was high and drunk every time I did an interview last year,” he said. “None of it was my idea ... [and] I’d say 75% of [the song] was already done when I walked in.”

In his ruling, Kronstadt wrote that Thicke’s “inconsistent statements” could not necessarily be understood as “direct evidence of copying”. However, all of Blurred Lines’s creators concede that they were already familiar with Gaye’s hit before their song was written.

The case is now scheduled to go to trial on 10 February 2015.