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Marvin Gaye's Estate Wins First Round Against Pharrell & Robin Thicke In Court

Lenny Kravitz, Grace Jones, Lauryn Hill, Lion Babe, Thundercat, SZA & More Rock The Afropunk Festival 2015 in Brooklyn, NY.

It's been a long time coming, but finally, a Los Angeles judge has ruled in the favor of Marvin Gaye's estate in the suit with Robin Thicke and Pharrell over the plagiarism of Gaye's '77 classic "Got To Give It Up." You may recall this time last year, when P and his yet-to-be divorced partner-in-crime opened a countersuit against Gaye's estate claiming that they were attempting to copyright an entire genre or era and that their own hit was merely in the vein of that era and not the straight-up swagger-jacking that it really was. Well, it appears that U.S. District Judge John Kronstadt would like to be on the right of history for this one, ruling that Pharrell and Thicke's 2013 summer smash does bear an uncanny resemblance to Gaye's hit, but there will need to be further litigation to decide upon the extent of that plagiarism. So the first battle has been won and the estate has settled privately with Sony/ATV, but the war over "Blurred Lines" is far from over, as a court date has been set for February 10th, 2015 to resume the court wars. Let's all hope the Gaye family gets theirs and the blurred licensing lines clear up after that mid-February day.

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