Opinion: The Ed Sheeran lawsuit raised questions related to the costs and benefits of music copyright and on whether there is scope to improve intellectual property policy.
During the past two weeks, music copyright litigation involving Ed Sheeran has drawn a lot of attention on social media. The case is often referred to as “Ed Sheeran vs. Marvin Gaye,” which is misleading because it is not a battle between two legendary songwriters.
A striking feature of copyright protection is that it is extremely long. For songs composed after 1978, copyright protection lasts for the life of the author plus an additional 70 years. This vastly exceeds the length of intellectual property on products and processes, which are typically protected by patents lasting for 20 years.
A second problem with the current copyright system is that, in some cases, U.S. courts have awarded very large damages that appear disconnected from the underlying sales lost by the copyright holder because of the infringement.Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams had to pay more than $5 million in damages
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