Jay-Z, Timbaland and Ginuwine Defeat Soul Singer’s Copyright Lawsuit
Rapper and entrepreneur JAY-Z, renowned producer Timbaland, and R&B artist Ginuwine have successfully navigated a copyright infringement lawsuit filed against them by soul musician Ernie Hines.
The lawsuit alleged that two songs, “Paper Chase” by JAY-Z and “Toe 2 Toe” by Ginuwine, both produced by Timbaland, utilized samples from the introduction of Ernie Hines’ 1969 song, “Help Me Put Out The Flame (In My Heart),” without proper authorization.
In their defense, the defendants contended that the sampled segment was derived from a widely used “stock” phrase originating from the 1914 composition, “Mysterioso Pizzicato.”
U.S. District Judge Paul Oetken ultimately dismissed the case, stating, “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.”
This legal victory underscores the significance of sampling in the music industry and the need to distinguish between genuinely copyrighted material and widely recognized phrases that fall into the public domain.
In a parallel copyright dispute, rapper Future and his legal team emerged victorious in a case from 2021, where DaQuan Robinson accused Future of appropriating his song, “When U Think About It,” into the hit track “When I Think About It.”
Robinson claimed to have sent an early version of his song to Future’s producer a year before the alleged infringement. However, U.S. District Judge Martha Pacold dismissed the case, citing the prevalence of recurring themes in hip-hop music and asserting that such themes, including guns, money, and jewelry, are not subject to copyright protection.
“The thematic elements that [the accusers] address — guns, money, and jewelry — are frequently present in Hip Hop and rap music,” wrote Judge Pacold. “The commonality of these themes in Hip Hop and rap place [them] outside the protections of copyright law.”
Furthermore, she referenced well-known hip-hop tracks such as 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” to demonstrate that the ideas and narratives in question are “too common a narrative to be protectable.”
Regarding the central phrase in both Future and Robinson’s songs, she noted that it is “a fragmentary expression that is commonplace in everyday speech and ubiquitous in popular music.” This ruling emphasizes the boundaries of copyright protection in hip-hop music and the importance of differentiating between protected creative elements and generic themes.
