The 9th Circuit just handed a win to remix artists in a Madonna “Vogue” sampling case. (VMG Salsoul v. Madonna, 9th Cir. June 2, 2016.) Madonna had sampled less than a quarter of a second of a song, and the 9th Circuit held that this was “de minimis” — an explicit rejection of the 6th Circuit’s reasoning in 2005 on the same issue (Bridgeport v. Dimension Films, 410 F.3d 792 (6th Cir. 2005)).
Full-text of opinion here (PDF); more analysis later.