The payout was apparently offered before Thicke filed a pre-emptive lawsuit to protect 'Blurred Lines'.
- Aug 24, 2013
AceShowbiz - Following Robin Thicke's filing of a pre-emptive lawsuit last week to protect "Blurred Lines" from potential copyright infringement claims, Marvin Gaye's family has come out to reveal that they had turned down a six-figure payout that the artist's team made to prevent them from making such claims. The payout was offered after Gaye's children Frankie Christian, Marvin III and Nona Marvisa accused Thicke and his co-writers Pharrell Williams and Clifford Harris Jr. of plagiarizing their late father's song "Got to Give It Up".
Apparently after the pre-emptive settlement had been declined by Gaye's family, Thicke, Williams and Harris Jr. filed a lawsuit with the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles asking for a ruling that "Blurred Lines" does not infringe on "Got to Give It Up". It also requested for a similar judgment with regards to a second song, George Clinton's "Sexy Ways", which Bridgeport Music Inc. claimed to have been plagiarized by Thicke's monster hit.
Before the controversy, Thicke had been upfront about how Gaye's "Got to Give It Up" was in fact "one of my favorite songs of all time" and how it influenced him in making "Blurred Lines". "I was like, 'Damn, we should make something like that, something with that groove.' Then he started playing a little something and we literally wrote the song in about a half hour and recorded it. The whole thing was done in a couple hours," recounted the singer.
However, Marvin Gaye III was clearly disappointed by how Thicke handled the situation, saying, "We're not happy with the way that he went about doing business let alone suing us for something where he clearly got his inspiration from at the least."
