Madonna Beats “Vogue” Copyright Suit

Madonna did not violate a copyright by using a modified horn sample in her 1990 hit, “Vogue,” a divided federal appeals court ruled last week. VMG Salsoul, the company that filed the lawsuit, owns the rights to the song, “Ooh I Love It (Love Break),” which features the horn segment. The segment that appears on Vogue is short, occurs only a few times and was also modified for use in the song. “Even if one grants the dubious proposition that a listener recognized some similarities between the horn hits in the two songs, it is hard to imagine that he or she would conclude that sampling had occurred,” Circuit Judge Susan Graber wrote in the court’s 2-1 ruling.