A trial date has been set over the Gaye family estate vs. Robin Thicke, Pharrell and T.I. catastrophe and their single “Blurred Lines.” The drama has interestingly lengthened the relevancy of the tune, as it’s soooo last year by now!

A trial date has been set over the Gaye family estate vs. Robin Thicke, Pharrell and T.I. catastrophe and their single “Blurred Lines.” The late singer’s family claims the song hijacks a substantial amount of copyrighted material from Gaye’s “Got To Give It Up,” and should hand over some of its earnings because of it. The drama has interestingly lengthened the relevancy of the tune, as it’s soooo last year by now!

The fiasco has been in litigation for some time already, with the “Blurred Lines” camp recently filing, and failing, to get a motion signed by a judge not to let it go any further. The recent move to actually go to trial is a small victory for the Gaye camp, but doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ve won the war just yet.

As with every instance running through the legal system there’s a ton of superfluous hullabaloo and fancy jargon surrounding it. The most important factor is that this could be a fairly historical case, and would open up a lot of doors for future lawsuits against songwriters who use inspirationa too closely. It’s tricky though, and is certainly not an easy task.

Jess Collen, a contributor to Forbes Magazine, responds to the controversy by saying, “This is not decided by a judge who listens to both songs and says ‘oh yeah, they definitely rock the same beat.’ The court looks at signature phrases, hooks, hooks with backup, theme, backup vocals, backup vocals with melody, percussion choices, harmonics, melodics and an octave of other considerations, all interspersed with photos of comparative musical scores.”

In short, it’s a proverbial cluster-fuck with no easy solution. Given that the songs are decades apart and a ton of legislative tricks have come and gone since, it makes the situation even more difficult as parties try to figure out which laws apply to what song and just how far others can be stretched to be considered useful.

We’re assuming that’s why a judge seemingly said, “Fuck it!” and is going to allow a jury to decide. Passing the buck, it’s what we would have done …

The trial date has been set for Feb. 10, 2015. It’s then that a group of peers will be stuck in a stuffy courtroom listening to both songs repeatedly until the madness sets in and a decision is made swiftly in hopes to just get the flying bejesus out of there.

Thicke's estranged wife Paula Patton also filed for divorce early last month after a 9-year marriage. Sheesh almighty, when it rains it pours, son. 

As far as the song goes, we’ve heard it enough on the radio already so we truly feel for those chosen for jury duty on that particular day. We may try and keep everyone updated, but mostly we probably won’t care because the trial is months away and who knows what will be the hot new thing to latch onto? Trends: We're balls deep in them all.

For now, listen to both songs here and decide for yourself:

Marvin Gaye, "Got To Give It Up":

Robin Thicke Feat. Pharrell and T.I., "Blurred Lines":