/ Invisible Dialogue: How Patents, Copyright, and Related Rights Shape the Music We Enjoy
April 21, 2025It’s time to reclaim that forgotten, and often uncomfortable, dialogue between patents, copyright, and related rights.
Patent Engineer
Alessandri
Throughout the history of music, technology and artistic creativity have gone hand in hand. But behind the innovations that shape how we make and experience music lies a complex and often conflicting web of intellectual property. In this space, frequently more competitive than cooperative, patents, copyright, and related rights coexist, each vying for relevance in the cultural industry.
When we talk about intellectual property in music, copyright is usually the first thing that comes to mind: it protects the intellectual creation of those who compose songs, write lyrics, or craft sheet music. From the moment a work is fixed in some tangible form, the author has the exclusive right to decide how it’s used, distributed, and adapted. But copyright is just one piece of the puzzle. Related rights protect performances and recordings. A guitarist who interprets someone else’s song and records it has rights over their performance. The same goes for the producers of that recording and the broadcasters who transmit it. These rights ensure that those who bring artistic or technical value to a work also receive recognition and compensation.
Then there are patents, which protect the technical inventions that make music possible—from a distortion pedal to a digital recording system. The conflict arises when these rights overlap or interfere with one another. And it has happened more than once, with significant consequences.
A classic example is the Fry Pan electric guitar patent from 1937. For years, Electro String Corporation’s patent prevented other manufacturers from producing solid-body electric guitars without licensing the invention. This restricted musicians and manufacturers until, by the late 1940s, companies like Fender began developing models that legally skirted existing patents, using technical variations to avoid lawsuits. Leo Fender, notably, chose not to patent many of his models, aiming to keep the market open and encourage widespread adoption, striking a careful balance between protection and sharing innovation.
Another iconic case involved Robert Moog and his synthesizers. Moog patented key components of his modular synthesizer in 1969. But as other manufacturers began developing similar equipment, disputes arose over what was truly patentable. The core issue? Musicians needed compatibility and access to emerging technologies, but licensing restrictions and patents were blocking interoperability. The issue eased somewhat when certain patents expired or weren’t renewed, paving the way for a boom in alternative synthesizers in the 1970s and ‘80s.
On the copyright and related rights front, one of the most significant flashpoints emerged with the rise of sampling. In the 1980s and ‘90s, hip-hop producers began lifting snippets from existing recordings to create new works, sparking legal battles. Not only did they need to license the original work (copyright), but also negotiate rights with performers and producers (related rights). The landmark case Grand Upright Music Ltd. v. Warner Bros. Records Inc. in 1991, where Biz Markie used a sample from Gilbert O’Sullivan without permission, set a hard precedent: courts ruled that unauthorized sampling was illegal, making it mandatory to obtain dual licenses, copyright and related rights, from that point forward.
Even in the digital age, these problems persist. The video game industry, for example, faces friction when using music tracks that are protected by both copyright and related rights, while also involving patented playback or mixing technologies. Some games have had to remove songs from their digital libraries when related rights agreements expired, even if the copyright remained valid, demonstrating how these rights don’t always travel in sync.
Sometimes these tensions resolve naturally, through the expiration of patents, which frees up technologies for new uses, as happened with the theremin and synthesizers. Other times, cross-licensing agreements and collaborative frameworks have emerged as industries begin to recognize the interdependence of these rights. Increasingly, creators and companies are adopting more flexible approaches, blending protection with creative openness.
But today’s biggest challenge may lie in the rise of AI-generated music. Who owns the copyright to a song composed by an algorithm? Who holds the related rights to its synthetic performance? And if the AI uses patented software to create or perform music, the complexity deepens even further.
It’s time to reclaim that forgotten, and often uncomfortable, dialogue between patents, copyright, and related rights. Understanding how these systems interact, both in harmony and in conflict, is essential to building a future where creativity, technical innovation, and artistic expression can coexist without stifling one another. Because music is not just art, it’s also technology, law, and a delicate social negotiation about how we share and value what we create.