SYDNEY, Feb. 25 (UPI) -- EMI Music says it filed papers with the Federal Court in Sydney appealing a ruling that Men At Work used part of someone else's song in their hit "Down Under."
Federal Court Justice Peter Jacobson ruled earlier this month there is "a sufficient degree of objective similarity" between a flute riff in the Australian band's 1983 pop classic and the late Marion Sinclair's "Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree," a popular folk song penned more than 70 years ago.
The BBC said the papers filed for an appeal stated songwriters Colin Hay and Ron Strykert did not breach copyright and insisted similarities may be noted only by a "highly educated musical ear."
A hearing at which the amount of damages the band will be ordered to pay has been set for later this month, the British broadcaster said.
Larrikin Music, which holds the rights to "Kookaburra," is seeking between 40 percent and 60 percent of the earnings from "Down Under" from Hay and Strykert, as well as record companies Sony BMG Music Entertainment and EMI Songs Australia.
But Hay has described any reference to Sinclair's song in his work as "inadvertent, naive, unconscious."
"By the time Men At Work had recorded the song, it had become unrecognizable," the BBC said he wrote in a statement earlier this month.
