My Sweet Lord Lawsuit: Subconscious Plagiarism and Damages

The My Sweet Lord lawsuit was a copyright infringement case in which a federal judge ruled in 1976 that George Harrison had copied the melody of the Chiffons’ 1963 hit “He’s So Fine” when he wrote his 1970 number-one single “My Sweet Lord.” The judge found that Harrison had not copied deliberately, but that his subconscious had reached for a tune it already knew worked. The case, Bright Tunes Music Corp. v. Harrisongs Music, Ltd., established subconscious plagiarism as a viable theory of music copyright infringement and set off a damages fight that lasted more than two decades.

What the Court Compared in the Two Songs

The trial took place in February 1976 before Judge Richard Owen in the Southern District of New York. Owen, himself a composer of operas, sat at the witness rail with Harrison and had him play guitar and sing themes from both songs for about an hour.¹

In his September 1, 1976 opinion, Owen pointed to four specific similarities:²

A short melodic phrase (sol-mi-re) repeated four times in both songs.
A second phrase (sol-la-do-la-do), repeated four times in “He’s So Fine” and three times in “My Sweet Lord.”
A distinctive grace note in the same position within that second phrase, which the court likened to “copying a mistake.”
Identical harmonic structures underneath.

Bright Tunes Music Corp., which held the publishing rights to “He’s So Fine,” had filed suit on February 10, 1971. The songwriter, Ronnie Mack, could not bring the claim himself; he had died of cancer in 1963 at age 23, while the record was still on the charts.³⁴

Why “Subconscious” Mattered

Owen accepted that Harrison had not deliberately copied the Chiffons’ hit. He wrote instead that “his subconscious knew it already had worked in a song his conscious mind did not remember.”² Harrison had conceded at trial that he had heard “He’s So Fine” before writing his own song.⁵

Under the standard the court applied, proof of access to the earlier work plus substantial similarity was enough. Intent was not required. Owen cited earlier authority, including Sheldon v. Metro-Goldwyn Pictures Corp. (1936), for the principle that copying is actionable “even though subconsciously accomplished.”² That finding is the reason the case is still cited today.

The Allen Klein Twist and the Damages Ruling

What should have been a routine damages phase became a second lawsuit because of Allen Klein, Harrison’s former business manager. Klein had represented Harrison when the suit was filed and had handled negotiations with Bright Tunes on Harrison’s behalf. After he and Harrison parted ways, Klein began consulting for Bright Tunes instead.⁶

In April 1978, Klein’s company, ABKCO Music, bought Bright Tunes outright for $587,000, taking the “He’s So Fine” copyright, the U.S. infringement claim, and worldwide rights. ABKCO then stepped in as the plaintiff seeking damages from Harrison.⁷

Harrison sued Klein. The court found that Klein had “covertly furnished” Bright Tunes with confidential financial schedules and personal estimates about the value of “My Sweet Lord” that he had obtained while working for Harrison, and that this information had discouraged a favorable settlement.⁸

In a February 19, 1981 opinion, Judge Owen calculated the gross earnings of “My Sweet Lord” at about $2.15 million and attributed three-fourths of that success to the copied melody, with the remainder due to the lyrics and Harrison’s fame. That produced a damages figure of $1,599,987.⁷

But because of Klein’s breach of fiduciary duty, Owen refused to let ABKCO collect the full amount. He imposed a constructive trust: ABKCO had to hold the rights it had acquired from Bright Tunes in trust for Harrison and transfer them once Harrison paid the $587,000 purchase price plus interest.⁷ Klein could recover what he had spent to buy Bright Tunes, but he could not profit from having switched sides. Both parties appealed, and in September 1991 the Second Circuit largely affirmed the rulings against ABKCO while reversing several points in Harrison’s favor.⁹

How It Finally Ended

A settlement was reached in 1998. Harrison received the rights to both “My Sweet Lord” and “He’s So Fine” for the UK and North America. Klein’s company kept the rights for the rest of the world.¹⁰ Harrison ended up owning, in his most important markets, the very song he had been found to have plagiarized.

Whether any of the proceeds ever reached Ronnie Mack’s family is not clear from the record. One account suggested his mother, Louise, would receive over $100,000, but there is no confirmed report that the money was paid.³

Harrison’s Reaction

Harrison said the case made it hard to write. He told Rolling Stone: “It’s difficult to just start writing again after you’ve been through that. When I put the radio on, every tune I hear sounds like something else.”¹⁰ He said the plaintiff’s experts had picked through the motifs “for about three days, to the point where I started to believe that maybe they did own those notes.”⁴ More broadly, he said, “99% of popular music that can be heard is reminiscent of something or other.”⁵

He also answered back in a song. “This Song,” released in 1976 on Thirty Three & 1/3, was a direct sendup of the litigation, with the line “This tune has nothing Bright about it” jabbing at Bright Tunes and a spoken interlude in which Eric Idle suggests the melody sounds like “Sugar Pie Honey Bunch” or “Rescue Me.” Its promo video was shot in a real Los Angeles courtroom, with Jim Keltner playing the judge, and Harrison debuted it on Saturday Night Live on November 20, 1976. The single reached number 25.¹¹⁴

Why the Case Still Matters

The idea that a songwriter could be liable for copying a melody without knowing it did not begin with Harrison. Judge Learned Hand had reached a similar result in 1924 in Fred Fisher, Inc. v. Dillingham, finding that Jerome Kern “probably unconsciously” lifted an accompaniment pattern from an earlier song and writing: “It is no excuse that in so doing his memory has played him a trick.”¹² The Harrison ruling, with a famous defendant and a memorable label, is what fixed the doctrine in the public and legal mind.

The underlying psychology has a name: cryptomnesia, a memory error in which someone mistakes a recalled idea for an original one. Research by Alan S. Brown and Dana R. Murphy in the Journal of Experimental Psychology found it occurred in roughly 3% to 9% of laboratory trials, especially during complex creative tasks that strain a person’s ability to track where an idea came from.¹³

In 2000, the Ninth Circuit formally endorsed subconscious copying as a basis for infringement in Three Boys Music Corp. v. Michael Bolton, affirming a $5.4 million verdict against Bolton over “Love Is a Wonderful Thing.” The court called the Harrison case the “most prominent example” of the doctrine’s modern application and held that widespread dissemination, such as radio airplay, could satisfy the access element.¹⁴ The doctrine is still an active tool in music copyright disputes, where the line between influence and infringement can be very thin.

1
Harvard Law School. Courtrooms and Dramas: Richard Owen ’50
2
Justia. Bright Tunes Music Corp. v. Harrisongs Music, Ltd., 420 F. Supp. 177
3
Songfacts. He’s So Fine: The Ronnie Mack Story
4
Performing Songwriter. George Harrison My Sweet Lord
5
This Day in Music. My Sweet Lord
6
Far Out Magazine. George Harrison Plagiarism My Sweet Lord Allen Klein
7
Justia. ABKCO Music, Inc. v. Harrisongs Music, Ltd., 508 F. Supp. 798
8
Digital Law Online. ABKCO Music, Inc. v. Harrisongs Music, Ltd.
9
Justia. ABKCO Music, Inc. v. Harrisongs Music, Ltd., 944 F.2d 971
10
Financial Times. Life of a Song: My Sweet Lord
11
Songfacts. This Song by George Harrison
12
GWU Law MCIR. Fred Fisher, Inc. v. Dillingham
13
American Psychological Association. A Memory Glitch That Leads to Plagiarism
14
UC Berkeley Law. Three Boys Music Corp. v. Bolton, 212 F.3d 477