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The 2025 Grammy Awards are reaffirmed, once again, as one of the most important celebrations of the music and cultural scene of the year. This edition is characterized by the diversity of the nominees, authentic music stars, such as Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, face new emerging talents who have gained popularity through digital platforms, such as Sabrina Carpenter or Doechii.
The celebration of this gala, which is now in its 67th edition, is a perfect event to highlight those curiosities from the perspective of intellectual and industrial property law that have been experienced in the music industry over the years and that have affected some of the nominated artists. Therefore, below, we will comment on five relevant data that, from this regulation, influence the most important award in the music industry.
Grammy Awards legal curiosities
1. About one of the stars of the night: the legal strategy behind the re-recording of Taylor Swift's songs
It is well known that the American artist Taylor Swift, one of the great stars of world pop, has decided to re-record the masters of her songs in order to have greater control over her work.
Taylor Swift signed a contract with Big Machine Records in 2005 according to which the artist assigned the rights to her masters, that is, the first recordings of her songs to the record label. This prevented her from having control over the original recordings of her first albums, although she did maintain the copyright on the compositions (lyrics and melody).
It was in 2019 when the Big Machine Records label was acquired by Ithaca Holdings, who acquired the rights to the artist's masters without her consent. This fact outraged the American, because not only did she not have the power to decide on the use of those recordings, but the rights had fallen into the hands of a company that did not have her confidence.
After numerous negotiations to acquire the master's rights to her songs at a reasonable price, Taylor Swift adopted the strategy of re-recording her first albums, which allowed her to obtain full rights to those new versions, known as Taylor's Version.
2. Nominated a song in which AI intervened And none other than the Beatles!
The song "Now and Then" by The Beatles has been nominated in two categories for the 2025 Grammy Awards, specifically, for record of the year and best rock performance.
This musical work has caused a lot of stir since it came to light since it has been one of the first to incorporate technology based on artificial intelligence. This tool has made it possible to restore and isolate John Lennon's voice from an original demo recorded in 1979 that was in poor condition.
Although the use of artificial intelligence has been severely criticized in the creative and music sector, this fact reflects one of the possible uses of this type of tool in favor of artists and music producers. However, the nomination has not been immune to controversies and doubts about its fit at the Grammy Awards and whether it could set a precedent for future nominations of songs that use AI as a production or editing tool.
3. Katy Perry's well-known accusation of plagiarism began at the Grammys
It was at the 56th edition of the Grammy Awards, in 2014 when Katy Perry presented her single "Dark horse". A song for which, a short time later, the American singer was involved in a controversial accusation of plagiarism by the artist Flame. The rapper sued Kate Perry for allegedly copying substantial parts of his Christian rap song "Joyful Noise."
Although the courts initially ruled in favor of the rapper, the decision was later overturned after an appeal filed by Perry confirming in her ruling that "the fragment of 'Joyful Noise' that overlaps with 'Dark Horse' is nothing more than a manifestly conventional arrangement of blocks of music. Allowing copyright to be applied to material of this nature would essentially imply imposing a monopoly of use for a sequence of two notes, or for an entire key."
Therefore, in 2022, after nine years of controversy, the court finally ruled in favour of the artist by considering that the fragments reproduced in her song did not reach sufficient originality for the rapper to hold copyright over them and, therefore, there was no infringement of the plaintiff's intellectual property rights.
4. Olivia Rodrigo, nominated in this edition, shares royalties with Paramore and Taylor Swift
Olivia Rodrigo, nominated this year for Best Song Written for Audiovisual Media, was also accused of plagiarism for her song "Good 4 U." Listeners detected that her work bore a certain similarity to the song Misery Business by the group Paramore, it was even rumored that the artist had been denounced by them.
This same situation was repeated again with her song "1 Step Forward, 3 Stpes Back", in which Taylor Swift's fans identified rhythms and melodies highly similar to those included in the song New Year's Day.
However, all rumors ceased the moment it came to light that Olivia had previously reached an agreement with the aforementioned artists. Both Hayley Williams and Josh Farro, members of the group Paramore, and Taylor Swift are listed as co-authors of the respective works that served as inspiration to Olivia Rodrigo, thus sharing the royalties generated by them.
5. The Grammy Awards as a trademark
The use of the Grammy name not only distinguishes musical excellence, but also entails the exploitation of a business model known worldwide that is protected by trademark regulations. Thus, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States owns up to four hundred trademarks internationally. These distinctive signs protect everything from the word Grammy, the graphic representation of its well-known gramophone awarded as a prize, its Latin Gramm edition and even the translation of these awards into the Chinese alphabet.
It should be noted that obtaining a trademark confers on the owner an exclusive right to use it in the course of trade and, in particular, entitles the owner to prohibit any third party from using it without his consent. Therefore, the Academy, in addition to exclusively using the Grammy name or any other sign protected by these trademarks, may prevent any unauthorized use that is intended to be made for similar purposes or that may cause confusion to the public.
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Pablo Pedraza y Belén Gómez-Acebo
Lawyers in the intellectual and industrial property
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