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Case 12a :

Stealing the Scores: Is it IP infringement or Plagiarism?

To complete her PhD in music composition, Greta must compose four original scores: 1 sonata or concerto, 2 etudes, and 1 full symphonic score. Greta already has a Masters in Fine Arts (MFA) in music performance, where she mastered clarinet performance, specializing in the higher pitched E-flat clarinet. She has struggled to compose the concerto and two studies, finding that composition of the accompaniment piano score stretched her limits for composition of harmony. Consequently, she received only a "pass" for her first composition performance examination, rather than the "pass with distinction" mark all students hope for.

Greta is now keen to improve her mark for the full symphonic score, where she intends to feature the range of woodwinds and double-reed instruments in a four part symphony inspired by the music of medieval Persia. Unfortunately, Greta is running out of time and her draft scores are, she fears, a reprisal of what her external examiner wrote: "dominated by melody and bass-lines with sagging harmonies". This is particularly the case in the lyric, adagio, movement.

When Greta visited a large conservatory in Tehran last year, she purchased a few scores and accompanying performance MP3 files to find inspiration for her Persian model of music. In one of the pieces, she found a beautiful adagio… better than any she could compose, she thought.

Sitting in her office, surrounded by stacks of staff paper, Greta is contemplating the worst case scenario,

"I will use the adagio section from this piece, but modulate the key, if I have the time. If not, no one in Hong Kong will know anything about a Turkish artist writing in Tehran for the President's state dinners".

As could be expected, the demands of a busy semester of tutoring, composition and performance overwhelmed Greta's best intentions and the day before her score was due to the music composition students' performance symphony conductor, Greta hurriedly entered the adagio from "Honor to the Revolutionary Guard" into her composition program and hit the "change key" function. She printed it out and ran to the symphony conductor to get the piece in on time to schedule her graduation performance.

• Is copying a musical score a case of copyright infringement or plagiarism?
• Reflecting on the standards of copyright in the Hong Kong Customs and Excise Department's "Copyright Ordinance", do Greta's actions constitute a violation of copyright?
• Is changing the key on a musical score the same as translating an article into a different language?
   

Imagine you are Greta:

• If one of your examiners notices the similarity of your adagio to the purloined piece, how could you justify what you have done?