Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke want a re-do in the "Blurred Lines" case. Although a jury ruled earlier this year that the duo owed Marvin Gaye's family millions of dollars for borrowing from "Got To Give It Up," Williams and Thicke filed a " Motion For A New Trial" over the weekend.
The document submitted to the court states:
"The grounds for this motion are that the jury's verdict finding that Counter-Defendants infringed 'Got To Give It Up' and the damages and profits awarded by the jury are unsupported by any evidence, let alone substantial evidence, and are contrary to law; and evidentiary errors and legal errors in the jury instructions were prejudicial and prevented Counter-Defendants from receiving a fair trial."
Williams and Thicke especially take aim at the testimony of musicologist Judith Finell, suggesting that her testimony about the "keyboard parts," "bass melody," and "signature phrase" "was inadmissible."
The current legislative climate is not favorable for Williams and Thicke. Earlier this year, Sam Smith gave Tom Petty a writing credit on "Stay With Me," since Smith's tune contained a chord progression similar to the one in Petty's "I Won't Back Down." More recently, Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars added the Gap Band as writers on their No. 1 hit "Uptown Funk" due to its alleged closeness to the Gap Band track "Oops Upside Your Head."
Funnily enough, if you read David Ritz's biography of Gaye, Divided Soul: The Life Of Marvin Gaye, there are two mentions of moments when Gaye stole the work of others and incorporated it into his own music.
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