First he lost his wife, now Robin Thicke is losing millions of dollars. Today a jury in Los Angeles ordered Mr. Thicke and his co-conspirator Pharrell Williams to pay $7.4 million to the estate of Marvin Gaye. That basically puts to rest the question of whether or not their 2013 song "Blurred Lines" ripped off Marvin's 1977 song "Got to Give It Up."
The jury ordered that the two artists pay $4 million in copyright damages plus $3.4 million that represents additional profits that were earned by Pharrell and Robin.
For those of you just tuning into this story, you can hear the two songs back to back right here:
Can you hear the similarities? If so, you may understand why Marvin's children, Frankie and Nona Gaye, might be a little upset.
We learned last week that "Blurred Lines" generated $16,675,690 in profits. That's more than any other song of 2013. Of that $16.67 million, $5,658,214 was paid to Robin Thicke, $5,153,457 was paid to Pharrell Williams and $704,774 went to T.I. The remaining $5,159,245 was split between three different record companies. One of those record companies, Universal Music, testified in court that the song's total overhead costs came to $6.9 million.
To read more about the lawsuit, please read this article from last week.
