American victory for comedic rights to parody music

On 3rd October 2007, Bourne Co. Music began legal proceedings against ‘several Fox divisions, Cartoon Network, Fuzzy Door Productions, Family Guy producer Seth MacFarlane and composer Walter Murphy’.

The reason? The popular American adult cartoon Family Guy had parodied Walt Disney’s When You Wish Upon A Star with both an episode name (When You Wish Upon A Weinstein) and a song contained within that episode (I Need A Jew).

The synopsis is simple. Peter Griffin, an idiotic middle-aged American voiced by Seth MacFarlane, a multi-millionaire comedian who was booked on American Airlines Flight 11 on 11 September 2001 (which flew into the North Tower of the World Trade Centre), but was late for the ill-fated flight, has money troubles. After hearing his friends talk about their ‘amazing’ accountants, who happen to be Jewish, he decides that the only way he can work his way out of trouble is to find a Jew.

Thus the parody of When You Wish Upon A Star was born. The episode, though endorsed by two rabbis, was originally deemed too offensive for TV when it was originally intended to air in 2000. As a result, the episode was not shown until 9th November 2003.

Bourne Co. Music, who owns the copyright to the song, sought unspecified damages and a halt to the programme’s distribution, despite the fact that the defendants had already distribtued well over one million copies of the episode by the time the lawsuit was filed.

In Bourne Co. v Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Fox Broadcasting Company, Twentieth Century Fox Television, Inc., Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, Inc., Fuzzy Door Productions, Inc., The Cartoon Network, Inc., Seth MacFarlane, Walter Murphy, the plaintiff claimed that the defendants ‘have harmed the value and reputation of “When You Wish Upon a Star” by associating the famous song with a vile and outrageous anti-Semitic message’.

On Monday, 20 months after the lawsuit was filed, U.S. District Judge Deborah Batts ruled in favour of the defendants, saying that the lyrics and tone of the song used in Family Guy were ‘strikingly different’ and that it was fair for it to be imitated for humorous effect.

‘It is precisely that beneficial association [with Disney, including Pinocchio] that opens the song up for ridicule by parodists seeking to take the wind out of such lofty, magical, or pure associations.’ She dismissed claims that it infringed Bourne Co.’s copyright.

It is, without a doubt, a victory for all comedy writers, performers and their financiers in allowing them to parody music for humorous effect, Regardless of how offensive the song was deemed to have been, had Judge Batts ruled in favour of the plaintiff it could have set a dangerous precedent for music owners across America to sue anyone who dared parody their works in the name of light-hearted entertainment.