Bittersweet Symphony IP Dispute Resolved

The dispute that first piqued my interest in intellectual property law was between The Rolling Stones and The Verve over the song Bittersweet Symphony in the late 1990s. Richard Ashcroft from The Verve, sampled a few seconds from a song by The Rolling Stones to make up the distinctive string melody that plays throughout the track and The Rolling Stones were having none of it.

It was a particularly obscure infringement in that (a) it was not a particularly well-known song by The Rolling Stones (it’s called The Last Time), (b) it was not even a sample from the original song, it was from an orchestral version of the song performed by the Andrew Oldham Orchestra, and (c) the outcome was notoriously one-sided as Richard Ashcroft ended up with 0% of all the publishing royalties from the song (and Jagger + Richards got 100% of the royalties).