This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Legal
EMI appeal Down Under ruling
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 26 February 2010
More from the Aussie appeal courts, and EMI have announced they will appeal the previously reported copyright ruling made against them regards the Men At Work track ‘Down Under’.
As previously reported, earlier this month an Aussie court ruled the track used a segment of the famous Aussie children’s folk tune ‘Kookaburra Sits In The Old Gum Tree’ without permission, and awarded a share of any revenues generated by the Men At Work song to indie music publisher Larrikin Music, who convinced the court they owned the rights in the folk tune (there had been some doubt over whether the copyright was owned by its late writer Marion Sinclair – whose rights had passed to Larrkin – or whether it was actually owned by the Girl Guide movement, to whom Sinclair had sent the song as part of a songwriting competition in which entrants technically speaking gave up their rights).
EMI, who own the publishing rights in the song (the main recording of which was released by CBS Records, now Sony Music), argue that the Kookaburra riff in ‘Down Under’ is at most a “tribute” to the folk song, rather than musical theft. They also bring up the ownership debate again. EMI Publishing’s Aussie office filed appeal papers with the Australian court yesterday.
