Judge Finds JERSEY BOYS is of Fair Use of Copyrighted Material

After almost a decade in court and two law suits later, a Nevada judge has ruled that the producers, writers, and director of JERSEY BOYS did not violate copyright law. This ruling, according to The Hollywood Reporter, overturned the jury's verdict from the trial last year.

Donna Corbello previously sued Frankie Valli and Bob Gaudio in 2011 for copyright infringement, claiming that the musical was based in part on an unpublished autobiography, ghost written by her late husband, which centered on Four Seasons band member Thomas DeVito. Ms. Corbello believed she should share in the profits from the long-running musical's success.

U.S. District Court judge Robert Jones gave the defendants relief in ruling in their favor, citing four factors that show fair use. The most important factor, according to Jones, is use upon the potential market, claiming, "The evidence at trial indicated that before the Play debuted, the Work had no market value. ... To the extent the Work may be profitable today, it is almost certainly only because of the Play ... consists of over 50% musical works (by running time) in which Plaintiff has no copyright, and the remainder of which (the non-musical script of the Play) is comprised of less than 1% of creative expression found in the Work and uses less than 1% of the Work. If anything, the Play has increased the value of the Work."

Jones also examined how much of the unpublished work made its way into the musical, stating, "In summary, at most, the jury could have found about 145 creative words to have been copied from the Work into the Play, whether as dialogue or creative descriptions of events," writes the judge. "Those 145 words constitute about 0.2% of the approximately 68,500 words in the Work."

The judge also noted the purpose and character of the use of the story. And in a final conclusion, he found the musical to be informative and transformative, leading to ruling in favor of the defendants.

JERSEY BOYS opened on Broadway to critical acclaim on November 6, 2005 at the August Wilson Theatre. JERSEY BOYS is written by Marshall Brickman & Rick Elice, with music by Bob Gaudio, lyrics by Bob Crewe, and is directed by two-time Tony Award-winner Des McAnuff and choreographed by Sergio Trujillo. The original Broadway cast included John Lloyd Young, Christian Hoff, Daniel Reichard and J.Robert Spencer.

JERSEY BOYS is the story of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons: Frankie Valli, Bob Gaudio, Tommy DeVito and Nick Massi, about a group of blue-collar boys from the wrong side of the tracks who became one of the biggest American pop music sensations of all time. They wrote their own songs, invented their own sounds and sold 175 million records worldwide - all before they were thirty. The show features all their hits including "Sherry," "Big Girls Don't Cry," "Oh What A Night," "Walk Like A Man," "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" and "Working My Way Back To You."

Photo credit: Jessica Fallon Gordon