Copyright battles

British alt rockers The Verve’s biggest hit, 1997’s massive Bittersweet Symphony shows how costly even overstepping a sampling agreement can be. Rights holders to the sample, from the Rolling Stones 1960’s song The Last Time, went after The Verve for using a larger portion of the song’s backing orchestral track than agreed. Despite being layered under nearly 50 layers of other music on Bittersweet Symphony, the rights holders forced The Verve to settle out of court and surrender all the band’s songwriting royalties from the platinum selling single.

In 2015, Blurred Lines songwriters Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams were ordered to pay the estate of late R&B legend Marvin Gaye more than $10 million. An American jury found the duo had copied Gaye’s 1977 hit Got to Give It Up lifting ‘‘distinct elements’’ from Gaye’s song for their 7.3 million copy-selling hit.