Original, Common, or Commonplace? Forensic Analysis and the Scope of Music Copyright

Part of the Hollander Musicology Lecture Series

What does musical similarity mean? Music copyright lawsuits necessarily involve close comparisons, often challenging courts to distinguish similarities in protectable original expressions from common conventions or commonplace musical “building blocks.” This presentation synthesizes musicological and legal scholarship with observations from forensic practice to examine the ways that particular musical similarities acquire evidentiary meaning. From “Blurred Lines” to the recent “Fish Market” case, copyright disputes reveal that legal boundaries between commonality and copying are rarely fixed, and instead contingent on cultural contexts and evolving repertories. Disputes about the scope of music copyright therefore raise essential musicological questions, with practical consequences for the ways that musical evidence should be evaluated.

About guest lecturer Katherine Leo

Katherine M. Leo is the John C. Griswold distinguished professor and associate professor of music at Millikin University. She holds a Ph.D. in musicology from The Ohio State University and a J.D. from its Moritz College of Law. As both a scholar and consulting expert, Dr. Leo investigates the histories, methods, and ethics of musical analysis in the context of copyright. She is the author of Forensic Musicology and the Blurred Lines of Music Copyright History; and co-editor of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Forensic Musicology. Her research has been most recently featured in the Journal of Musicological Research and the Journal of the American Musicological Society.

Learn more about Katherine M. Leo at the Millikin University website.