The Blurred Lines lawsuit ended with a Los Angeles jury finding in March 2015 that Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams infringed the copyright in Marvin Gaye’s 1977 song “Got to Give It Up.” After post-trial adjustments, the Gaye family walked away with roughly $5.3 million in damages and a 50% running royalty on all future songwriter and publishing revenues from “Blurred Lines.” The Ninth Circuit upheld that outcome in 2018, and the case has shaped music copyright litigation ever since.
How the Case Started
Thicke and Williams sued first. In August 2013, facing infringement allegations the Gaye family had been raising through their lawyers, the two songwriters filed a preemptive action asking a federal court to declare “Blurred Lines” original and non-infringing. The Gayes responded with counterclaims in October and November 2013, and those counterclaims became the real case. The people who launched the lawsuit spent the rest of it on defense.
Thicke’s own words did not help. In deposition, he admitted he had been high on Vicodin and alcohol when the song was written and that Pharrell Williams had created nearly the entire track. He acknowledged exaggerating his role in press interviews, including the widely repeated story that he had suggested using Gaye’s song as a reference point. By his sworn account, Pharrell had the beat and “wrote almost every single part of the song.” Those admissions damaged the credibility of the defense’s story about how “Blurred Lines” was made.
The Copyright Question at the Center of the Case
Federal copyright law protects original works of authorship, including musical compositions, but it does not protect ideas, styles, or genre conventions.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 U.S. Code 102 – Subject Matter of Copyright: In General The question the jury had to answer was whether “Blurred Lines” copied protectable expression from “Got to Give It Up” or only evoked the same feel.
An important wrinkle framed everything else. “Got to Give It Up” was released in 1977, a year before the Copyright Act of 1976 took effect on January 1, 1978.2U.S. Copyright Office. Copyright Law of the United States (Title 17) The song’s protection came from the older 1909 Copyright Act, which covered only the composition as deposited with the U.S. Copyright Office in sheet music form. The studio recording, with its distinctive percussion, party atmosphere, and production, was not part of the copyright.
That meant the jury could not compare the two records side by side. The comparison was limited to elements captured in the sheet music: melody, harmony, bass line, and keyboard figures. The Gaye estate argued the similarities within that narrower window were still substantial. The defense argued any overlap reflected shared conventions of late-1970s funk and disco.
The Trial and the Verdict
The case was tried in February 2015 in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. Both sides put on musicologists.3United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Williams v. Gaye
For the Gaye family, Judith Finell testified that the two songs shared a constellation of similarities in bass lines, keyboard parts, and vocal melodies, and that the specific combination went beyond coincidence. Harvard musicologist Dr. Ingrid Monson supported that analysis. For the defense, musicologist Sandy Wilbur testified that the songs were not substantially similar and that the shared features were stock building blocks common across the funk genre.
On March 10, 2015, after a seven-day trial and two days of deliberation, the jury found Thicke and Williams liable for copyright infringement. Rapper T.I. (Clifford Harris Jr.) was cleared of personal infringement liability. The jury awarded the Gaye family approximately $7.4 million: $4 million in actual damages plus roughly $3.4 million in profits split between Thicke and Williams.
Post-Trial Changes and the Ongoing Royalty
On July 14, 2015, Judge John A. Kronstadt cut the damages. He reduced actual damages from $4 million to about $3.19 million and trimmed the profits award, bringing the total judgment to roughly $5.3 million.3United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Williams v. Gaye
The cut came with a catch that mattered far more than the reduction. Judge Kronstadt granted the Gaye family a 50% running royalty on all future songwriter and publishing revenues from “Blurred Lines.” The jury’s award had only covered past sales, and the Gaye family’s lawyers had warned they would return to court every few years to re-litigate damages if no ongoing royalty was ordered. The running royalty converted a one-time judgment into an indefinite revenue stream and made the case substantially more expensive over time than the headline figure suggested.
The Ninth Circuit Appeal
Thicke and Williams appealed. They argued the verdict rested on an improper comparison of unprotectable “feel” or “groove” rather than specific elements in the deposited sheet music, and that letting it stand would effectively allow artists to copyright a style.
In March 2018, a divided three-judge panel affirmed the verdict 2-1. The majority held that the Gaye family’s musicologist had presented enough evidence of similarity in the sheet music elements for the jury’s finding to stand, and that an appellate court should defer to the jury on those factual questions.3United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Williams v. Gaye
The majority also relied on the Ninth Circuit’s “inverse ratio rule,” a doctrine that lowered a plaintiff’s burden on similarity when the defendant had significant access to the earlier work. Because Thicke and Williams openly acknowledged knowing “Got to Give It Up,” the Gayes had a lighter load to carry on that element.
Judge Nguyen’s Dissent
Judge Jacqueline Nguyen dissented. She wrote that the majority “allows the Gayes to accomplish what no one has before: copyright a musical style,” and warned that the decision “establishes a dangerous precedent that strikes a devastating blow to future musicians and composers everywhere.”3United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Williams v. Gaye She argued the ruling drew the line between protectable expression and unprotectable ideas so broadly that future songwriters would find a shrunken pool of creative material to work with, and criticized the majority’s use of the inverse ratio rule as penalizing Williams and Thicke for being familiar with a famous song virtually every working musician had heard.
Thicke and Williams did not seek Supreme Court review, so the Ninth Circuit’s 2018 ruling was the final word.
How the Ruling Changed the Music Industry
The verdict prompted a defensive shift across the industry. Preemptive songwriting credits became routine. Lawyers began vetting tracks for potential infringement claims before release, and settlements for similarity disputes climbed. Retroactive credits followed the same pattern, with Olivia Rodrigo adding Paramore and Taylor Swift to writing credits on her material, and Sam Smith giving Tom Petty a credit on “Stay With Me.” Artists grew more cautious about the kind of genre-referencing that had long been a staple of pop songwriting.
The tension underneath that shift has never fully resolved. Songwriters who grew up studying earlier music now face the risk that evoking a predecessor too closely can trigger litigation. At the same time, the ruling reinforced that copyright holders have enforceable rights even when the copying involves structure and combination rather than a note-for-note lift.
Later Cases That Narrowed the Precedent
Two Ninth Circuit decisions since 2018 have blunted the tools that made the Blurred Lines verdict possible.
Skidmore v. Led Zeppelin and the End of the Inverse Ratio Rule
In Skidmore v. Led Zeppelin (2020), the Ninth Circuit sitting en banc abolished the inverse ratio rule the Blurred Lines majority had leaned on. The court called the rule illogical and a source of confusion, and held that proof of access can never substitute for proof that the defendant actually copied protectable expression. The court noted that the Williams v. Gaye majority had originally defended the rule but later deleted all references to it in an amended opinion, effectively conceding the point.4United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Skidmore v. Led Zeppelin In the Ninth Circuit today, showing that a songwriter heard a famous track no longer lowers the bar for proving infringement.
The Katy Perry “Dark Horse” Reversal
In Gray v. Hudson (2022), the Ninth Circuit reversed a $2.8 million verdict that had found Katy Perry’s “Dark Horse” infringed a Christian rap track called “Joyful Noise.” The court held that the similar phrases consisted entirely of common building blocks: a short snippet of a descending minor scale with some repeated notes played in a uniform rhythm. None of those elements, alone or combined, met the originality threshold copyright requires. Common musical elements and genre conventions, the court said, belong in the public domain.5United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Gray v. Hudson
The Blurred Lines verdict still stands. But Skidmore and Gray together have made it harder for a future plaintiff in the Ninth Circuit to reach the same result: no more inverse ratio rule, and a firmer requirement that the copied elements reflect genuine originality rather than genre convention.