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The legal hurly-burly over the rights to the biggest-selling single of 2013 continues.

Potted history: following public accusations of plagiarism, Thicke, Pharrell Williams and T.I. filed a pre-emptive lawsuit against Marvin Gaye‘s family to determine that they didn’t copy Gaye’s 1977 song ‘Got to Give It Up’ on their ubiquitous unit-shifter ‘Blurred Lines’. Despite attempts to bring the skirmish to an early end – Thicke reportedly attempted to nip the suit in the bud by offering the Gaye family a six-figure sum, to no avail – the Gayes launched a countersuit of their own, claiming that Thicke also cribbed from Gaye on another one of his tracks, ‘Love After War’ and exhibited a “Marvin Gaye fixation” across his catalogue. Publisher EMI – which is owned by Song/ATV – were also dragged into the firing line by the Gayes, who accused them of failing to protect Gaye’s music and trying to browbeat the family into dropping their legal action.

As Billboard report, some – although by no means all – of the legal mud-slinging has now come to an end. Sony/ATV have reached an out-of-court settlement with the Gaye family, meaning that the publisher will no longer have to defend their corner in the suit. Sony/ATV are also now extricated from the potential problems of having to address the fact that they now own 30% of the music publishing market in court – seen by many as a conflict of interest. They’re not entirely out of the woods: the company is still expected to be called to the box during the Thicke/Gaye suit in order to explain why they failed to safeguard the Gaye copyright in the first place.

As a reward for making it through that ever-so-knotty legal story, here’s ‘Got to Give It Up’ live in action.

 

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