OH Jay Z! Two-Letter Word Sparks Infringement Lawsuit

September 25th, 2014. By LucyC

“OH” my god—are you kidding? It’s a copyright trolling lawsuit but it may be one for the books. BUT seriously folks—it’s over the use of one word. Set to be precedent setting—according to legal scholars—Rapper Jay Z is in a legal battle for the use of an “oh” shout allegedly taken from a 1969 recording made by Eddie Bo. (who?)

Yup. Our finest legal brains are at work here to make sure that no-one goes without. Jay Z uses the “oh” just once in his song “Run This Town.” According to the lawsuit, currently being duked out in New York, the “oh” is taken from the Eddie Bo’s song “Hook & Sling Part 1” recorded in 1969. That was last century and I’m betting Jay Z’s audience isn’t old enough to remember 1969.

The lawsuit against Jay Z accuses him of “wilful, wanton, and reckless tortuous conduct,” for his use of Bo’s recorded “oh,” according to court documents filed by lawyer Kelly D. Talcott of behalf of TufAmerican Inc—the plaintiff.

Jay Z’s legal team, who are not napping on this one, hit back by noting that the rapper barely uses the “oh”, and notably, plenty of people besides Bo have said “oh.”

“The snippet at issue consists solely of the shouted word ‘oh’ that appears once in Plaintiff’s Recording, at approximately the 0.03 mark of the introduction of Plaintiff’s Recording and lasts a fraction of a second,” write Jay Z’s lawyer Ilene S. Farkas, in her response to the lawsuit.

You try to hear that “Oh”…

So what do the experts think? According to Bobby Glushko, a communications and copyright librarian at the University of Toronto, in Canada, the case has a significance that goes far beyond the songs in question. Say what?

“Rap is so based on sampling,” Glushko said in an interview. He pointed out that rappers who don’t have Jay Z’s financial clout could benefit from any legal precedent he manages to set in this case. “There are plenty of people out there who just have to roll over because they don’t have the resources to fight it,” Glushko said. I’ll bet.

Ariel Katz, a law Professor also at U of T, weighed in stating that it was tough to say there was a substantial similarity between the ‘oh’ from Bo and the ‘oh from Jay Z. “Rap and many other forms of expression are based on taking parts of others’ works,” Katz said.

In Jay Z’s response to the lawsuit, Farkas argues that American courts have already tossed out similar lawsuits regarding sampling of the expressions, “Now I want y’all to break this down,” “you’ve got to stand for something, or you’ll fall for anything,” “it’s the hottest thing,” “step up front,” “get down” and “holla back.”

If Jay Z loses the lawsuit, the court can’t award any money to Bo (real name Edwin Joseph Bocage), since he died in 2009 at the age of 78. “Oh” my god—do I feel old (could I get sued for that?)

So who stands to benefit from this? Answer—TufAmerican, Inc., a New York corporation that owns Tuff City Music Group, which bought up Scram Records, which owned the original song—“Hook & Sling Part 1”.

For the record, pardon the pun, Bo had a long and distinguished recording career, having laid down tracks with over 40 labels. TufAmerican, Inc is riffing on that, arguing that “The ‘Hook & Sling’ master is unique intellectual property subject to common-law copyright protection under the law of the State of New York.”

Well, yes, but…if we’ve gotten to the point where we copyright common usage monosyllables, we’re all in trouble.

This was posted on Thursday, September 25th, 2014 at 6:05 pm and is filed under Crazy Sh*t Lawyers See . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.