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In 2016, South Korean children’s entertainment company Pinkfong released Baby Shark, a cultural phenomenon that transcended borders. The song quickly went viral worldwide, becoming the most-viewed YouTube video of all time by 2020, with over seven billion views. Just a year later, it achieved another milestone, becoming the first video to reach 10 billion views. Its popularity led to translations in over 100 languages, numerous cover versions, and even a feature film adaptation.
The origins of baby shark are pretty vague, some say it came from the US in the 1970s and was familiar and well known in summer camps that children would stay at whilst some say that it was created in a response to Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” in 1975 in a way to combat the negative public opinion that sharks were portrayed in resulting from their depiction in the film.
Jonathan Wright’s version
Jonathan Wright created his version in 2011, which he published to YouTube titled “Baby Shark Song (non-dismemberment version)” which features him and children dancing to the song next to a pool. On initially hearing that Pinkfong was using the classic folk song for their interpretation, he stated that since the song was in the public domain, “Pinkfong could go right ahead and use it“.
However, when a South Korean political party, which opposed the current opposition People’s Power Party, used Baby Shark in one of their political campaigns, Pinkfong threatened legal action against this party. This sparked the idea in Jonathan that he could threaten legal action against Pinkfong if they were to target the political party.
Wright’s Claim
Jonathan’s claim, which was recently rejected by the Supreme Court in South Korea, marked the end of a long and arduous legal battle. The Court upheld the verdicts of two lower courts, ruling that Pinkfong had not infringed on the rights of the song made by Jonathan Wright, recorded in 2021, based on the same children’s folk song.
“The Supreme Court accepts the lower court’s finding that the plaintiff’s song did not involve substantial modifications to the folk tune related to the case to the extent that it could be regarded, by common social standards, as a separate work“
Jonathan Wright claimed to own the copyright to his interpretation of children’s folk songs. However, Pinkfong argued that his version was an arrangement of the same folk song, which was in the public domain and not restricted or copyrighted. The Court stated that “in the case of a new song based on a pre-existing one, one needs to add sufficient revision for it to be socially accepted as a new work, for it to be protected as a copyrighted material“.
This reinforced the fact that Jonathan did not sufficiently revise the original song to qualify it for protection as a new work, further strengthened by the Court stating that minor changes added to the original material cannot be considered an original creative work and thus cannot be protected by the copyright law.
Conclusion
This ruling by the South Korean Supreme Court reinforces the principle that works based on a public domain must sufficiently demonstrate significant originality to qualify for copyright protection. Jonathan’s version of Baby Shark did gain considerable attention from the public on YouTube; however, the version was not transformative and would not be considered as a distinct work qualifying it for copyright protection.
