“Matthew Sag, a Loyola University Chicago law professor specializing in copyright infringement, said the line between imitation and illegal copying can be blurry.

“You want to reward creativity, but you don’t want to accidentally punish people for using what are the building blocks of an entire style of music,” Sag said. “No one owns a genre.”

Sag said the first step in a copyright suit is to prove that the defendants were in a position to have heard the music that was allegedly stolen. In Tanaka’s case, proving the writers were living in Sweden when Tanaka’s song was being played on radio and TV could be crucial, he said. Minaj and her team will also have to provide records on the creative process behind “Starships,” Sag said.

The lawsuit was filed more than a year after Tanaka posted a clip on the music-sharing site SoundCloud under the headline “Neu Starships.” The clip synchronizes the two songs, with a listener hearing Tanaka’s song in the right ear and “Starships” in the left.

“We believe they are similar to the point that it is nearly impossible for it to be a coincidence,” Niro said.”

– http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-nicki-minaj-copyright-suit-20130911,0,4687682.story