'You Raise Me Up' copyright fight rejected by US Supreme Court

THE owner of a 1977 Icelandic song suing over a song popularised by Josh Groban failed to convince the US Supreme Court to review the Ninth Circuit's copyright standard.

Johannsongs-Publishing asked the high court to invalidate the two-part test for substantial similarity applied by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. It argued a separate test used by the Second Circuit would be enough to revive its claims that "You Raise Me Up," written by Rolf Lovland in 2001 and popularised by Groban in 2003, infringed the song Söknuður.

The Ninth Circuit takes stock of shared, protectable elements between works in an objective "extrinsic test." If it finds enough, it then considers the overall feel of the works in the subjective "intrinsic test." The Second Circuit applies an "ordinary observer test." Other circuits are divided over whether the "extrinsic test" is appropriate, Johannsongs said.

Johannsongs argued the Ninth Circuit's test is "logically flawed," as a robotic analysis can't capture the "soul" of music or art. Several circuits have rightly rejected the need to run the extrinsic test's filtering process, it said.

Johannsongs sued Lovland, Universal Music Group Recordings, and Warner Records, among others, in 2018. The US District Court for the Central District of California awarded the defendants summary judgement but denied them attorneys fees.

The Ninth Circuit affirmed, holding that Johannsongs failed to provide enough evidence showing that the 2 songs are substantially similar. Johannsongs' expert didn't effectively filter out similarities between the songs that can be attributed to prior works, the court said.

Johannsongs was represented by Machat & Associates. The respondents were represented by Loeb & Loeb. BLOOMBERG