Alleging copyright infringement of his instrumental track "If I Could Fly" by their song "Viva La Vida" noted guitarist Joe Satriani is suing Coldplay. There's a clip on YouTube that compares the two, and frankly, they are very similar. But as any rookie entertainment lawyer will tell you, that's not enough to win this sort of case. If we're not mistaken, one must prove access by the alleged party to the creation of the song in question. Having heard the song broadcast, no matter how widespread its distribution or its popularity, does not constitute actual access in legal terms.
These cases are routinely fought between relatively unknown plaintiffs and well-known artists and are almost never won by the former. The odds don't fare much better for the plaintiff even if they are both famous, George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord"/"He's So Fine" case being the rare exception. (Interestingly, according to music biz insider Moses Avalon, in his book Confessions of a Record Producer: How to Survive the Scams and Shams of the Music Business, Satriani's one-time boss, none other than Mick Jagger himself, was sued by Jamaican reggae artist Patrick Alley for allegedly ripping off "Just Another Night" which Alley had recorded in 1979 and released in 1982. Alley was able to prove access in the form of legendary session man Sly Dunbar who played on both Alley's and Jagger's versions of the track. Avalon states that while testifying on the stand the famed drummer stated he couldn't remember playing on the original version. Jagger was subsequently cleared.)
In any event, we doubt anyone in Coldplay has ever heard a Satriani song, let alone copy one. They were probably too busy aping Radiohead circa The Bends, anyway.
Here's the aforementioned clip:
