http://blogs.geniocity.com/friedman/2009/11/cukoo-kookaburra-copyright-claim/ The ways law rules creative endeavors and the ways law itself is a creative endeavor Sat, 11 Feb 2012 13:08:18 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 http://blogs.geniocity.com/friedman/2009/11/cukoo-kookaburra-copyright-claim/comment-page-1/#comment-3208 Ruling Imagination: Law and Creativity » Blog Archive » Cuckoo Kookabura — Culture as the Language of Art Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:19:00 +0000 http://blogs.geniocity.com/friedman/2009/11/cukoo-kookaburra-copyright-claim/#comment-3208 [...] I wrote in November of the claim by the owners of the copyright in the Australian chestnut Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree that Men at Work had infringed Kookabura’s copyright in their 1981 #1 hit Men Down Under. The claim is ridiculous. As the Sydney Morning Herald reported at the time, “[t]he key, harmony, structure and rhythm of Down Under’s famous riff changed the sound of it so much that nobody – not the band, [the managing director of the company that owned the copyright to Kookaburra], or even five out of six [of the game show] panellists . . . noticed it until someone turned it into a quiz show question.” [...] [...] I wrote in November of the claim by the owners of the copyright in the Australian chestnut Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree that Men at Work had infringed Kookabura’s copyright in their 1981 #1 hit Men Down Under. The claim is ridiculous. As the Sydney Morning Herald reported at the time, “[t]he key, harmony, structure and rhythm of Down Under’s famous riff changed the sound of it so much that nobody – not the band, [the managing director of the company that owned the copyright to Kookaburra], or even five out of six [of the game show] panellists . . . noticed it until someone turned it into a quiz show question.” [...]

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