Property law solicitors, particularly those that focus as much on intellectual property as conveyancing, will often experience rather unique sets of circumstances where there is a conflict between the letter of the law and the spirit in which it was made.
This can be particularly unusual in contract and intellectual property law, as happened when rock musician Neil Young was sued by his record label for making uncommercial music that did not sound enough like him.
Conversely, there was an even more infamous legal case where another rock star who made his name in the 1960s was sued for allegedly stealing from himself.
As with all legal cases, context is important to understand how such a bizarre case influenced other cases involving creativity and intellectual property.
Run Down The Road
The case of Fantasy Records vs Fogerty concerns two songs written by the same man 15 years apart.
In 1970, John Fogerty was the lead singer, guitarist and primary songwriter of Creedence Clearwater Revival, one of the biggest bands in the world following the split of The Beatles that same year, and would record the song Run Through The Jungle for their fifth album Cosmo’s Factory.
After the band acrimoniously split in 1972 following their seventh album Mardi Gras, John Fogerty embarked on a relatively disappointing solo career that ended just four years later with the cancellation of his third album Hoodoo.
Nine years later, he made a highly successful comeback, with the 1985 single The Old Man Down The Road off of the album Centerfield becoming Mr Fogerty’s only top ten hit, but it also led to a remarkable lawsuit.
Zaentz Vs Fogerty
John Fogerty was no stranger to lawsuits, with the breakup of CCR being so acrimonious that there are multiple lawsuits between himself and the two surviving members of the band, Doug Clifford and Stu Cook, as well as his brother’s widow.
However, the most famous legal cases involve the album Centerfield, which led to multiple lawsuits, including one for defamation that was settled out of court, between himself, Fantasy Records, and record executive Saul Zaentz.
The biggest case, Fantasy v Fogerty, was based on a claim that The Old Man Down The Road stole the melody from Run Through The Jungle and only replaced the lyrics.
This led to the unusual situation that a musician was being sued for plagiarising himself because even though he wrote, performed and produced Run Through The Jungle, the copyright was owned by Fantasy Records.
Ultimately, this part of the case was not tested, as the jury ruled very quickly that the songs did not meet the “substantially similar” criteria to qualify as copyright infringement.
The songs had a few similarities, but the songs were far from melodically identical and those similarities were genre conventions of the style of rock music John Fogerty played.
Given the complexities of intellectual property law, particularly when it came to music, the case was important as it could have potentially led to situations where the signature style of a musical artist could be owned by a third party and force them to change their styles to avoid the risk of actionable infringement against themselves.