THE piece of music commonly known as The Lion Sleeps Tonight, made famous in the animated film The Lion King, led to a bitter spat between the family of Solomon Linda, the original composer of the Zulu song, and the Walt Disney Corporation on its alleged infringement of his original work.The dispute was settled in 2006 with Disney agreeing to pay an undisclosed amount of money in lieu of royalties.There have been a plethora of recent disputes on copyright between famous musicians including Madonna, Pharrell Williams, Robin Thicke, Led Zeppelin and Ed Sheeran.The dispute involving Madonna dates back to the early 1990s and involved her smash hit Vogue. The plaintiff VMG Salsoul alleged that she had copied a 0.23 second riff from an earlier song, Love Breaks.The case revolved primarily around the application by the US Court of Appeals of the de minimis defence — an established principle of US copyright law which states that de minimis copying does not amount to infringement of copyrigh...
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