Here is a guide to some of the most consequential music copyright cases in recent decades, along with excerpts from their recordings. In cases like these, the only material in question are the songs’ underlying compositions: the melodies, chords and lyrics that can be notated on paper. Juries must decide not only if one song copies another, but whether the earlier song was original and distinctive enough to be protected by copyright. “The problem with cases like this is that people ask the wrong question,” said Joe Bennett, a professor at the Berklee College of Music who works as a forensic musicologist in legal cases. “They ask the question, ‘How similar is song B to song A,’ whereas what they should be asking is how original is song A.”Got that?

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