Apple’s legal battle with Harold Arlen estate likely to proceed to jury

completemusicupdate.com:

The Californian judge overseeing a legal battle between Apple and the estates of Harold Arlen, Ray Henderson and Harry Warren said earlier this week that he’s not inclined to grant either side in the dispute the summary judgements they had requested, meaning all elements of the case could go before a jury.Apple was hoping to persuade the judge to remove the specific claims of wilful copyright infringement that have been made against it, the ‘wilful’ bit usually significantly increasing any damages that may be awarded down the line.The tech giant argued that it was at least one step removed from any alleged infringement, and that it was impractical for it to check whether every label and distributor it has deals with in the US has correctly licensed the song rights contained in their recordings.It also accused the three estates of choosing to go straight to litigation over the alleged copyright infringement because that way there could be decent damages for their lawyers to share in.

However, the judge said that he felt there was probably enough factual disputes in this case to require jury deliberations, even on the wilful infringement claim.This legal action was originally instigated by the estate of Arlen, who wrote ‘Over The Rainbow’, ‘I’ve Got The World On A String’ and ‘Get Happy’, among many other famous works.

His estate argues that an assortment of labels and distributors have uploaded bootleg versions of recordings of those songs to otherwise legitimate download stores and streaming services.The Arlen estate is suing not as the owner of the recording rights in those tracks, but in relation to the accompanying song rights.