Coffey v Warner [2005] EWHC 449

• Claimant sued Defendant, Warner Bros, for breach of copyright; alleged that a song co-written by Madonna was an infringement of Claimant’s musical copyright, a song called ‘Forever After’.

• In Claimant’s claim of particulars, however, Claimant defined the ‘musical work’ infringed as the vocal expression, syncopation and pitch contour around the vocal hook “does it really matter” – rather than the actual song ‘Forever After’ itself.

Held

• Performer’s interpretation of music or personal performance characteristics do not constitute a ‘musical work’

• Thus things not capable of being ‘musical works’ include the performer’s: 

  • Voice expression

  • Pitch contour

  • Syncopation the hook “does it really matter”

Separability

• Whether something is a ‘work’ matter for objective determination by the court.

• In this case, Claimant could not simply select parts of her song most similar to Madonna’s and use them as basis for her copyright work.

  • I.e. by removing the rest of song (which was obviously not copied), was danger of creating an illusion of copying in the parts that remained.

• In addition the three features identified by Claimant were not sufficiently separable from rest of song to constitute musical work in their own right.