Music Plagiarism and The Law

There are three levels of plagiarism of which are, Plagiarism where the artist has directly copied a piece of music with intent, Subconscious Plagiarism where the artist may have heard the song previously and wrote their song with little to no knowledge of the song they have been suspected of copying, subconscious plagiarism also includes the use of a piece of music in a different genre as although the two tracks may not sound the same due to the differences in genres the chord structure or melodies may be the same or very similar. And the final outcome is that there was No Copyright Infringement where the songs are noticeably different in sound and structure.

An example of a court case of music plagiarism is The Chiffons' He's So Fine being copied by George Harrison's My Sweet Lord, George Harrison was found guilty for subconscious plagiarism as he had claimed not to have intentionally copy The Chiffons' song, the similarities were particularly noticeable within the baseline and structure of My Sweet Lord and as a result George Harisson was fined £1,000,000 (£10,000,000 in today's money)

Here are some more examples of copyright court cases in the music industry.