Last year, we wrote about a dispute between two guys who had both recorded songs based on the number pi. A guy named Lars Erickson had recorded The Pi Symphony back in 1992 and registered a copyright on the output. It was based on assigning notes to the numbers 0 to 9, then playing them according to the sequence of pi. On March 14th, 2011 — also known as Pi Day, since the 3/14 date matches the 3.14 beginning of pi — musician Michael Blake came up with a similar idea. According to NPR’s report on the song:

He decided the song would be in C, then assigned each note a number: C=1, D=2 and so on up through 9. Using those assignments, he played the sequence of pi: 3.14159 through 31 decimal places. He assigned numbers to chords, too, but could only play the chords every other note and still make it sound vaguely musical.

Finally, he used pi as the basis for the tempo — it’s 157 beats per minute, which is half of 314. He played this part on several instruments, as you can see in the video above, and layered them to make a song. The result isn’t exactly catchy, but it’s certainly melodic.

Apparently Erickson got upset about this — though he admits he was mainly upset that his own comments on the YouTube video of Blake’s song were deleted. So he filed a lawsuit claiming copyright infringement.

Blake successfully had the lawsuit transferred from Nebraska to Portland, Oregon, and has now succeeded in having the case dismissed, with the ruling itself issued on March 14 — Pi Day once again. The ruling is embedded below, and it’s a worthwhile read, highlighting the limitations of copyright. It actually goes into a fairly detailed description of the separation between ideas and expression, as well as questions about “substantial similarity.” The conclusion:

The primary similarity between Pi Symphony and “What Pi Sounds Like” is the musical
pattern formed by transposing the digits of pi to a set of musical notes. That pattern is not
protected by Mr. Erickson’s copyright for Pi Symphony. Pi is a non-copyrightable fact, and the
transcription of pi to music is a non-copyrightable idea. The resulting pattern of notes is an
expression that merges with the non-copyrightable idea of putting pi to music: assigning digits to
musical notes and playing those notes in the sequence of pi is an idea that can only be expressed
in a finite number of ways. This does not mean that Mr. Erickson’s copyright is invalid, only
that Mr. Erickson may not use his copyright to stop others from employing this particular pattern
of musical notes.

What may be protected by copyright is the combination of that pattern with other musical
elements: the choice of scale, rhythm, harmony, and embellishments or variation, for example…. Pi Symphony and “What Pi Sounds Like” employ different
rhythms, different phrasing, different harmonies, and different tempos. The court does not agree
with Mr. Erickson that the melodies of Pi Symphony and “What Pi Sounds Like” are sufficiently
similar in their cadence or tempo to raise a question of substantial similarity. If there are
additional similarities that relate to protectable elements of Mr. Erickson’s musical work, those
similarities are minor and scattered throughout the work. For one work to be substantially
similar to another, more than incidental and occasional similarities are required….

Thus, after the similarities based on unprotected elements of Pi Symphony are set aside,
very few–if any–similarities remain. Mr. Erickson’s copyright is therefore “thin” and protects
his work only from virtually identical copying…

The court also dismisses Erickson’s claim of “unfair competition,” noting that what appeared to be straight up jealousy is no reason for a legal claim:

Copyright protects against the copying of original elements of an author’s work. It does
not protect the copyright holder’s goodwill, market status, or artistic success. It does not even
protect the author’s hard work in being the first to create a compilation of information otherwise
available in the public domain. See Feist, 499 U.S. at 359-360 (rejecting the “sweat of the brow”
theory of copyright protection). These limitations derive from the constitutional basis of
copyright, which is “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited
Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and
Discoveries.” U.S. Const. art. 1, sec. 8, cl. 8. Copyright is thus intended to protect the original
work of authors without granting monopolies over facts or ideas that would hinder further
progress…. Given statutory law, the Constitution, and Supreme Court precedent, Mr. Erickson cannot use his
copyright to stop Mr. Blake from employing the same idea—the transcription of the digits of pi
to musical notes.

Nice to see the court lay out the reasoning so clearly. It’s unclear if the court recognized the symbolic nature of issuing the ruling on Pi Day, but either way, it was a nice move.

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