Coldplay settles Satriani’s plagiarism lawsuit
Way back when (as in December of 2008), in the first of what would be many plagiarism accusations brought against Coldplay, Joe Satriani claimed that Chris Martin and Co.’s “Viva La Vida” was a direct ripoff of one of his compositions, “If I Could Fly”. A lawsuit was eventually filed, seeking a jury trial, damages, and “any and all profits attributable to the alleged copyright infringement.”
While the trial part never went down, as TwentyFourBit reports, it looks as if everything else did. According to court docket reports by Justia News, Satriani’s lawsuit was dismissed “upon Stipulation” by Judge Dean D. Pregerson, and “each party bears own cost.”
In other words, Satch got paid.
I think the great thing about music is that it is ultimately sujective and arouses passion. Great two things, then. I’m afraid I fell asleep while listening to the full Satriani tune on Youtube (there wasn’t much to watch) while I consider Coldplay’s Viva La Vida album to be a seamless masterpiece. I guess we are just not going to go to bed together.
Perhaps, Coldplay should fire their guitarist and employ Joe then they could win more Grammy’s without the threat of lawsuits hanging over their collective heads. Goodness knows Joe could play rings around him and then some - in fact, he can play rings around most guitarists on the planet, period.
As for money I would pay to see the G3 series of concerts, I bought one on DVD, and was blown away. But I would never ever pay to see a Coldplay show - in fact, I would pay not to see a Coldplay concert.
So Joe got some money of those uber-rich *******, good on him he deserves it!
Since when was using the same 4 chords considered plagiarism? Maybe the Axis of Awesome should be told! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHBVnMf2t7w&feature=related
Good to see the creation of a unique melody has been protected by copyright it deserves. Not everyone can create a melody as good / catchy + ultimately commercially viable as that, it takes talent and a lot of effort. It is so bad / wrong when people without that talent rip the work of others off to make money for themselves.
not even a huge coldplay guy at all but satch’s claim is ridiculous… shall we patent every single note ever written?
VLV has strings while satchs is an electric solo
Satch was looking for a big payday, nothing more. I guess he ended up getting it. Now maybe he can get back to making more crappy albums with Chickenfoot.
Sep 28th, 2009 at 10:15 am
[...] been a little rough for Coldplay lately. As we mentioned last week, just days after settling with Joe Satriani over plagiarism allegations, the band is now being accused of copyright [...]