Introduction
In celebration of the World Intellectual Property Day 2025, the WIPO has chosen a specific theme for the day: "IP and Music: Feel the Beat of IP"1. This year's theme brings to the surface the indispensable role IP rights play in the establishment of a lively and sustainable music ecosystem, where creativity, culture, and technology are all in harmony. Although the discussion around music-related IP usually revolves around copyright, but patents actually have an even more massive effect on the innovation in the music industry which cannot be overlooked.
Intellectual Property plays a vital role in protecting the rights associated with music. Copyrights secures the original musical works, trademarks protect brand names and logos related to music and patents cover the instruments and technological inventions/innovations used to create music. IP provides exclusive rights to the creators and owners, allows them to sell, use and manage their protected musical IP that also provides legal protection and restricts others from using, selling or reproducing the same work without permission, ensuring fair compensation to the original creators.
In general, copyrights are utilized to protect the exclusive rights of the owners of the music, ensuring the royalties to be paid to the creator on using, selling and managing of the creator's music.
Additionally, in order to protect the rights of the novel and inventive instruments and inventions related to music, trademarks and patents can be filed, ensuring royalties are paid to the patent holder on using, selling and managing of the inventor's musical instrument and invention.
Importance of Patent Protection in the Music Industry
The role of patents in today's technology-driven music world is clear, where patents help in:
- Promoting innovation by giving the inventors and developers the exclusive rights for a limited period of time, patents drives investments into the cutting edge music industry.
- Generating commercial value by licensing or selling the granted patents to generate revenue for inventors, enabling broader use in the industry.
- Solidifying market position in the market by differentiating a company having patented technology, from its competitors.
- Improving performance and production by safeguarding the innovations arising from the studio equipment to stage mechanisms, which are instrumental in transforming the concepts of artistic vision into practical real life experience.
Innovations in Music: Notable Patents That Shaped the Industry
Some of the greatest iconic personalities in music industry and companies have contributed to technical innovation and sought patent protection to protect their inventions. Below are the few compelling examples:
#1 Michael Jackson (US5255452)2secured a patent for a specialized footwear and a moveable hitch for creating an anti-gravity illusion effect for performing on his smooth criminal music video, `1988. Thespecialized footwear and a moveable hitch or post detachably engaged to allow the footwear wearer to lean forward on the stage, with his or her center of gravity well beyond the front of the shoes, thereby creating the desired visual effect. The invention provides a new design for shoes that allows his or her performing artist, by engaging the shoes onto an upstanding post positioned to project upwardly from a stage at a predetermined time, to lean forwardly to put his or her center of gravity beyond the front or rear of his shoes, thereby creating the desired gravity defying interesting visual effect.
#2 Jason Regler (US20140184386)3,invented Xylobands/ wristbands that synchronize with the band's music and lighting during concerts. The wristbands create an interactive, synchronized light show experience for audience members. The wristband includes a radio receiver, a processor and a bright LED. The LEDs of the crowd gets light up in accordance with the beat of the music and creating a wave of light to the whole crowd. The organizers of the event can split the whole crowd into zones, so different sections of the crowd can have different colour of light displays, adding depth and dimension to the overall visual experience. The invention elevates the production value of concerts and make a sense of unity and connection among audience.
#3 Yamaha (EP2017823A1)4,secured a patent for Hybrid wind instrument that combines an alto saxophone with an electronic system, allowing players to selectively produce both acoustic and electronic tones from the same instrument. The system allows the player to switch between traditional sexaphone sounds and electronically generated tones as desired during a performance, expanding their creative possibilities without compromising the saxophone's traditional sound quality. The instrument is integrated with a control unit for the electronic system onto the saxophone's bell brace that doesn't get in the way of the player's fingers and is strong enough to hold the electronic bits without changing the instrument's acoustic characteristics.
#4 Edward Van Halen (US4656917)5,best known for skilled guitar player, got a patent for a musical instrument support system that allows players of stringed musical instruments to have complete freedom of both hands while playing the stringed musical instruments, allowing the player to create new techniques and sounds. The support system has a special plate that sits comfortably on the player's leg. The device positions the musical instrument perpendicular to the player's body that gives the player a perfect view of the entire musical instrument.
#5 Kavish Seth (IN201621011853)6,who is an Indian poet, singer and songwriter, has created a novel musical instrument called Noori. The Noori is a versatile hybrid musical instrument that combines elements of guitar, rabab, sarod and djembe, offering both string and percussion capabilities with expanded tonal range and playing options. Noori combines string and percussion capabilities that allow the instrument to be played like a guitar or other stringed instruments and a djembe. The Noori is capable of producing both polyphonic and mononphonic playing styles and allows musicians to explore a wide range of tonal possibilities and playing techniques from various musical traditions within a single instrument. Noori is a versatile musical instrument wherein all kinds of schools of music are playable, namely Indian classical, Western music and Arabic music.
#6 SPOTIFY (US20080256042)7,secured a patent for automatically acquiring acoustic and cultural information about music that is stored in the music metadata library. The invention automatically acquires acoustic metadata and explicit metadata from one or more music tracks of the client's playlist, which is assigned to a unique identifier to determine whether the track is already existed or not in order to store the tracks in the music metadata library.
#7 DEVELOPMENT KISHORE CHANDRA N (IN202441056097)8,introduces a ground breaking multi-agent AI system for collaborative music composition between human musicians and AI agents, enhancing the creative process and expanding artistic possibilities in music composition and performance. This invention is like a bridge between the world of human creativity and the limitless potential of AI, creating a playground where musicians can explore, experiment, and push the boundaries of what's possible in music. The system can handle everything coming from human with catchy melodies to laying down groovy rhythms and even suggesting interesting instrument contributions. The system can generate cohesive musical pieces, adapt to user input in real-time, and function either as a creative partner or an autonomous composer that can be used in live performance, sound design and music production.
Footnotes
2 https://patents.google.com/patent/US5255452A/en?oq=US5255452
3 https://patents.google.com/patent/US20140184386A1/en?oq=US20140184386
4 https://patents.google.com/patent/EP2017823A1/en?oq=EP2017823A1
5 https://patents.google.com/patent/US4656917A/en?oq=US4656917
6 https://iprsearch.ipindia.gov.in/PatentSearch/PatentSearch/ViewPDF
7 https://patents.google.com/patent/US20080256042A1/en?oq=US20080256042
8 https://iprsearch.ipindia.gov.in/PatentSearch/PatentSearch/ViewPDF
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