04 Mar Blurry Line Between Inspiration and IP Infringement
“Blurred Lines” singers Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke recently learned just how blurry the line between intellectual property right infringement and creative inspiration can truly be. A jury controversially awarded $7.3 million to the Marvin Gaye estate after finding that Williams and Thicke infringed the copyrighted sheet music for Marvin Gaye’s song, “Got to Give it Up”– a claim the singers strongly refute.
Confused? You’re not alone: the line between inspiration and property infringement can indeed be fuzzy, even for experts. Patents are complex and contain language meant to hide innovation. Copyrighted works can be difficult to find because everything since 1989 is copyrighted automatically and not all copyrights have been registered. Trademarks can take hours to search through and compare.
Understanding Intellectual Property Rights Basics
Here’s an easy way to think about intellectual property rights: consider how mining rights were developed. A prospector would discover a piece of land to mine and the government would allow the prospector to ‘stake a claim’ and exclusively mine his claim. Patent claims are similar in that they exclude others, in this case using words as boundaries to define the claim instead of physical markers. Claims are the only enforceable part of a patent and they draw the legal boundary of ownership.
Patent infringement is “the act of making, using, selling, or offering to sell a patented invention—without the permission of the patent owner.” Similarly, copyright infringement is the “unauthorized use, reproduction, distribution, display, or performance of a protected work” and trademark infringement is the unauthorized use of a trademark or service mark.
Next Steps: Minimizing the Risk for Infringement
Here’s how to minimize your litigation risk and determine if your inspiration has a legal pathway to commercial success: