Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke have been ordered to pay a total of nearly $5m (£3.9m) to the family of Marvin Gaye, in a final judgment in the plagiarism case that found similarity between their song Blurred Lines and Gaye’s song Got to Give It Up.
Blurred Lines reached No 1 in the US and UK in 2013, becoming Thicke’s biggest hit to date, eventually generating a total of $16.6m in revenue (with Thicke and Williams earning $5m each). In August of that year, following an accusation by the Gaye family that the song borrowed from Got to Give It Up, Thicke and Williams filed a lawsuit to try and affirm that their song did not infringe copyright.
The Gaye family, who own the copyright to their father’s songs, countersued, resulting in a legal battle that initially concluded in March 2015, with a judge ruling in favour of the family – Thicke and Williams were ordered to pay $7.4m.
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