Trademarks? So the sound of a piece of music can be a trademark now? I understand relatively well the notion of copyright as it applies to music, but I can't fathom how trademarks apply. I can imagine the name, logo, and distinctive likeness of a given performer being trademarks, but I wasn't aware that his music would be subject to anything other than copyright.

I have to ask, is this the appropriate time to bring up the notion that the big companies are distorting the nature of and intended function of copyright law? There's a reason why copyrights are supposed to be finite. It's a part of the deal. If a creator (of any kind) would like legal protection for his right to control the reproduction and distribution (among other things) of his work, then the flipside is that it's supposed to become freely redistributable after a certain length of time. That length of time should, of course, be long enough that the composer (or other creator) should be able to reap the benefits of his work for the extent of his natural life, but it was not originally intended to be an indefinite period, which is what the big corporations would like.

Hmm, so Wikipedia is wrong, then? It says:
And there's an mp3 to the performance of the song... if it were copyrighted, it wouldn't be allowed.

Also, check this out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pla...opular_culture
So it's used all over... I really think they're gonna get laughed out of court. At least, I hope so.

I'm gonna have to agree with Soluzar: music cannot be trademarked. You probably meant copyrights. Still, it should probably have expired...

Copyrighted, yes, sorry.

In the case of Gladiator, the reference was intentional and admitted, which means that by not having paid the Holst institute, he did leave himself open for the suit.

It's obviously a quantitative issue, rather than boolean. And in practice, most musical plagiarism lawsuits are settled by an expert witness who shows how the allegedly stolen passage in question actually appeared in a 10th century motet and thus falls into the public domain. But outside of a legal context, I think we can in many cases point our finger and identify blatant ripping-off.