Rick Beato is right to rant about music copyright strikes

It gets even crazier when compared to other IP law:

Engineer makes an invention: Write 30-Page patent application. Multi-year patenting process with USPTO, pay 1000s of $ if DIY, 10x that if using an IP law firm. Multiply by 4x if going international. With luck, patent gets issued 3 years later. It protects you for 25 years, but only if you have deep pockets for an IP lawsuit in case someone does copy you -- and with uncertain outcome.

Artist releases a song: automatically enjoys 100+ years of protection, even for minor samples, hooks, melodic elements. Lawsuits are easily won as long as you can prove you are the copyright holder.

I have my theories about how we ended up in this state of affairs but no jurist with a sliver of common sense can seriously claim that this is fine.

I think it's worth mentioning that with a patent, nobody else is allowed to use the patented idea. This holds even if they have never heard of you before, and were entirely unaware your patent (or your version of the patented concept) existed. You are granted a monopoly.

With a copyright, people are allowed to do anything similar to you, so long as they do not derive their work from yours. Someone unaware of your work cannot infringe your copyright. You do not have a monopoly on anything, you are just protected against someone deriving their work from yours directly.

This difference probably factors into how easy it is to win a lawsuit: for a copyright infringement, you need to show they made a copy. You wouldn't be bringing suit in the first place if there were substantial doubt in that area. It also factors into how easy it should be to get a patent vs a copyright: a patent closes off much, much, MUCH more idea-space than a copyright.

> With a copyright, people are allowed to do anything similar to you, so long as they do not derive their work from yours.

That is patently false for music - a songwriter's claim today that they never heard a slightly similar hook from 40 years ago generally doesn't hold in court.

The burden of proof of infringement is on the plaintiff in either case.

If you have an obscure patent nobody has ever heard of, you can win the suit by showing that the defendant had the same idea you did - you don't need to show their work derives from yours.

If you have an obscure song nobody has ever heard (or even an unpublished one!) you are going to have a difficult time proving infringement for a similar riff.

Perhaps you're most familiar with litigation around very famous songs, like the Under Pressure / Ice Ice famous case? In those cultural-saturation cases the court may make the assumption that the later party could have been exposed to the work of the earlier one, but that is not the case universally.

They got George Harrison for a different song that had a similar melody. Don’t think it was identical, though would have to investigate.