Marvin Gaye, Robin Thicke Countersuit Filed for 'Blurred Lines' (Audio)

The family of legendary musician Marvin Gaye filed a countersuit against Robin Thicke Wednesday, alleging that some of the singer's hits, including "Blurred Lines," are ripped straight from some of their father's greatest songs.

In court papers, Frankie and Nona Gaye accuse Thicke of having a "fixation" with their father, which they say extends to more than one of the singer's tracks, including summer anthem "Blurred Lines" and "Love After War."

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Thicke and producers/songwriters Pharrell Williams and Clifford Harris Jr. are guilty of "blatant copying of a constellation of distinctive and significant compositional elements of Marvin Gaye's classic #1 songs," the suit claims, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The lawsuit cites numerous Thicke reviews as seen in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, and Vice, which all note the similarities between songs like "Blurred Lines" and Gaye's "Got to Give It Up." The Gayes also claim Thicke's "Love After War" sounds a lot like "After the Dance."

They even quote a GQ interview with Thicke, in which he apparently admits that he drew from Gaye for inspiration on "Blurred Lines."

"Pharrell and I were in the studio and I told him that one of my favorite songs of all time was Marvin Gaye’s 'Got to Give it Up.' I was like, 'Damn, we should make something like that, something with that groove,'" he reportedly told the magazine. "Then he started playing a little something and we literally wrote the song in about a half hour and recorded it."

The suit also implicates EMI April, the song publisher that's now owned by Sony/ATV. The company breached its contract and fiduciary duty by failing to protect Gaye's songs, the family alleges.

The new lawsuit is in response to the peremptory one filed by Thicke, Williams, and Harris Jr. in August, in which they argued that "being reminiscent of a 'sound' is not copyright infringement."














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