Originally Posted By: Guitarhacker

Either way, I'm rather glad that Alan P didn't contact his lawyers and instigate a case. Remember that case where George Harrison was sued for 3 freaking notes on My Sweet Lord?


George wasn't just sued for "3 notes" on My Sweet Lord. The judge actually said that if those notes were the only similarity then he wouldn't have ruled against Harrison. The problem was that there were many other points of similarity - for example the "3 notes" repeat several times ... the exact same number of times in each song. Then in each song a new melody is introduced, and that melody is also the same in each song, and is also repeated the exact same number of times. The judge (who happened to be a musician himself) said that couldn't have been a coincidence.

I think the resemblance to "He's So Fine" was pointed out to George when he was recording the song - but he obviously wasn't bothered enough to make a small change to the melody (or structure) to eliminate the problem.

As for the Men At Work song - the owners of "Kookaburra" only ended up getting a relatively small %, and only from a relatively recent date. I think part of the problem for Greg Ham was that he did admit he'd lifted the part, probably thinking the original was out of copyright, and so felt guilty about getting the band "in trouble".

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