3 Count: Blurred Fees

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1: Marvin Gaye Family Wants $3.4 Million More in “Blurred Lines” Lawsuit

First off today, Eriq Gardner at The Hollywood Reporter Esquire reports that, in the Blurred Lines case, the Marvin Gaye family has petitioned the judge to grant them some $2.6 million in attorneys’ fees and $777,000 in expenses over the lawsuit.

The lawsuit began when members of the Gaye Estate made claims that the Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams song Blurred Lines was based on Marvin Gaye’s song Got to Give it Up. That prompted Thicke and Williams to proactively sue but, when the case went to trial, the jury found in favor of the Gaye Estate and awarded them $7.4 million. That amount, however, was pared down to $5.3 million by the judge but included an ongoing 50 percent royalty rate of songwriter and publishing revenues.

The lawsuit itself is on appeal. However, while the parties wait for the Appeals Court to rule, the Gaye Estate is moving ahead with its request for legal fees and expenses, which totals more than $3.4 million.

2: Police Drop Investigation into Pirate Bay Suspect

Next up today, Andy at Torrentfreak writes that the Swedish police have announced that that part of their investigation into The Pirate Bay is closed due to a lack of manpower and resources needed to analyze servers seized 13 months ago.

In December 2014, Swedish police raided a Stockholm web host and seized some 50 servers believed to be connected to The Pirate Bay and EZTV, another pirate site. At the time it was also announced that one suspect was already in custody.

The Pirate Bay went down but returned after a few days. Since then, little progress has been made on the case and the police blame a lack of resources on the faltering investigation. The police also stated that, due to the bottleneck and a lack of evidence against their suspect, they’ve dropped the case against him as well. However, the police do claim that they are investigating other suspects.

3: Unlike Spotify, Pandora Says They Will Not Launch New Streaming Service Without “Appropriate Licenses”

Next up today, Arl Herstand at Digital Music News reports that Pandora has announced it will not be following in the footsteps of Spotify and, as it builds its anticipated on-demand streaming service, will work to ensure it has all of the appropriate licenses for the music it streams.

Music streaming service Spotify has been hit with two class action lawsuits over its alleged streaming of music without paying mechanical licensing royalties. However, Spotify has claimed to have set aside millions to pay such royalties when they learn which rightsholders they go to.

Pandora, however, has contracted Music Reports to handle its mechanical licensing. This is in contrast to Spotify, which uses the more popular Harry Fox Agency. Musicians claim that Music Reports is more accurate when dealing with small, independent artists and many of those artists have received Notice of Intent from Music Reports with relation to Rdio, an on-demand music streaming company that Pandora acquired. This sentiment is backed up by a letter from Pandora to publishers which says the company will not launch any “expanded service offerings” without the needed licenses.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today. We will be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

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