Probing into Copyright Infringement by Sampling: from USA to EU

Sampling has become a part and parcel of the music industry in the postmodern culture. With the booming of the hip-hop and electronic genre of music, sampling revolution has been brought to the industry which is responsible for the emergence of copyright infringement issues in both alleged and substantiated forms. Sampling founded its origin in the United States, where the legal system seemed to be efficient in dealing with the balancing of competing rights between the intellectual property rights holders and the users of those respective properties. It took almost three decades for the US legal system to develop a cross and check mechanism or licensing model which checks the permissibility of sampling through its own established rules comprised of law, doctrines, and case laws. Now, similar issues have been referred to the European Court of Justice by the German Federal Supreme Court to determine the probability of EU copyright law’s allowing sampling. The question urges the enthusiasm of investigating the existing legal framework of the EU, prima facie, sought strong protection against the right holders to leave any room for permitting sampling. This paper particularly focused to show how the US Fair Use and de minimis fits the EU legal frame to answer the derived questions asked by the German court to the CJEU which will pave the way for licensing mechanism for sampling in the EU.