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05 October 2021
The successful Taiwanese song "Your Name Engraved Herein," which won Song of the Year at the Golden Melody Awards and is included in the film of the same name, has been accused of plagiarism.
Malaysian musician Keon Chia and Hsu Wan-ting, and Singaporean musician Chen Wen-hua collaborated on the song. Many other singers produced renditions of the song after Crowd Lu sang it.
The song's three authors were accused of plagiarism by television presenter Jacky Wu, and the three issued a formal statement denying the charge. The melody of "Your Name Engraved Herein" is said to be extremely similar to Richard Sanderson's "Reality," while other internet users say the prelude is a duplicate of JINBAO's piano composition "Freedom Hill."
"The songwriters were accused of plagiarism because someone feels that the overall impression given by the melody in the chorus of “Your Name Engraved Herein” is similar to that of Rochard Sanderson’s “Reality”," says Nick J. C. Lan, Attorney at Law, Tsai, Lee & Chen in Taiwan.
In songwriting, Lan says that there is not a clear standard in plagiarism - similarity in how many bars, to constitute substantial similarity.
"The Taiwan court usually considers the overall impression and the components of both parties’ works (chord, rhythm, interval and so on) as well as the opinions of experts to determine whether there is substantial similarity," he says.
"Therefore, for avoding being accused of plagiarism, the author is recommended to conduct due diligence before publishing the work to avoid being accused of plagiarism. It is notable that some useful tools such as Shazam and Spotify’s patented plagiarism detector might be used to detect and check plagiarism."
He says that it is recommended to mark copyright notices on the package, video or contexts of music works since copyright notices can be used as the prima facie evidence proving your authorship.
"Copyright registration is also an efficient method to prove the date of creation, publication and authorship of music works," he says.
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