Tone Deaf recently reported on the verdict of a case that saw the estate of Marvin Gaye pitted against singer Robin Thicke and super-producer Pharrell Williams, with the Gaye Estate alleging that Thicke and Williams’ chart-topper ‘Blurred Lines’ infringed on one of Gaye’s hits.

Part of what made the case so interesting is that it was not precipitated by a soundalike chord sequence, a cribbed melody, or a stolen set of lyrics. The Gaye estate’s case was predicated on the notion that ‘Blurred Lines’ and ‘Got to Give It Up’ just felt the same.

The case actually overshadowed two other copyright cases that had far more basis than the ‘Blurred Lines’ suit, which ruled in favour of Gaye’s family thought Thicke and Williams seem to have every intention of pursuing an appeal against the verdict.

One of the cases involved hip-hop superstar Jay-Z, who stole a sample of an old Italian jazz recording by Bruno Spoerri for his song ‘Versus’. The theft was so blatant that the court ruled Hova must pay 50 percent of the royalties from the track to Spoerri.

It’s a shame that he didn’t just ask Spoerri if he could use the sample, because according to the artist himself, it “would have been relatively cheap”. In the second and more recent case, young hip-hop upstart Mac Miller did in fact ask to use a sample from the band Aquarian Dream.

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But when he couldn’t get through to the band, he just used the sample anyway. As Digital Music News writes, the lawsuit filed by the band’s singer, Jacques Burvick, claims Miller stole the tune ‘Yesterday (Was So Nice Today)’ from their album Fantasy and used it for his track ‘Therapy’.

As readers can see below, Miller’s track, which appeared on his album Faces, undeniably features a sample of ‘Yesterday (Was So Nice Today)’, so no matter which way you stretch it, Miller is in a lot of trouble and stands to lose quite a bit of cash.

Burvick even claims that a rep for Miller knew they were busted because when they were called out, the rep admitted that they had tried to contact Burvick to okay the sample, but when they couldn’t get through they just went ahead and used the sample regardless.

According to this copyright lawyer’s dream of a suit, the song has been downloaded over 700,000 times from Mac’s website and Burvick wants a judge to force Mac to part with at least $150k in damages. Barring anything unforeseen, it looks like Miller may just have to.

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