JAY-Z, Timbaland and Ginuwine have collectively overcome copyright infringement allegations brought against them by soul musician Ernie Hines.
The lawsuit claims that “Paper Chase” by Hov and “Toe 2 Toe” by Ginuwine, both of which were produced by Timbaland, sampled the introduction of the 1969 song, “Help Me Put Out The Flame (In My Heart),” without permission.
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The defendants insisted that the sample in question was extracted from a widely used “stock” phrase from 1914’s “Mysterioso Pizzicato.”
U.S. District Judge Paul Oetken dismissed the case, saying: “the Introduction borrows from a heavily used work that is in the public domain, and it adds only material that is not original enough to be copyrightable.”
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In a similar dispute, Future’s legal team won a copyright case that was brought against him in 2021 as the judge overlooking the proceedings did a good amount of research into the matter herself.
In late August, Martha Pacold threw out the lawsuit by rapper DaQuan Robinson alleging that his song, “When U Think About It,” was repackaged by the Atlanta native as a bigger hit, “When I Think About It.”
Robinson said that he emailed an early cut of his song to Future’s producer a year prior to the release of what he claims is an infringement of his work. Still, the judge dismissed his assertions on grounds of general theme’s in music and, more specifically, Hip Hop not being covered by copyright.
“The thematic elements that [the accusers] address — guns, money, and jewelry — are frequently present in Hip Hop and rap music,” Pacold wrote. “The commonality of these themes in Hip Hop and rap place [them] outside the protections of copyright law.”
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To illustrate that the ideas and narratives in question are “too common a narrative to be protectable,” she referenced the lyrical matter of Notorious B.I.G.’s “Machine Gun Funk,” Wu-Tang Clan’s “C.R.E.A.M. (Cash Rules Everything Around Me)” and Kanye West’s “Diamonds From Sierra Leone.”
About the central phrase of Future and Robinson’s songs being nearly identical, she added: “It is a fragmentary expression that is commonplace in everyday speech and ubiquitous in popular music.”
