The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals just decided that sampling a song without permission does not necessarily infringe the copyright. Many artists have built careers by sampling an old song to create a new work. Until now, courts have told the artist to "get a license or do not sample."

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals decided in 2005 that there is no de minimus exception to sampling. The de minimus exception, which applies to the copyright law generally, states that if an artist borrowed an insignificant portion of an existing work, the artist did not infringe. The Sixth Circuit held that this exception did not apply to sampling. This meant that if an artist sampled a portion of a song that lasted a fraction of a second, the artist nonetheless infringed.

Now, the Ninth Circuit in VMG Salsoul, LLC v Madonna Ciccone ("Salsoul") took "the unusual step of creating a circuit split" and decided that the de minimus exception does apply to sampling. In Salsoul, Madonna sampled a 0.23-second "horn blast" from a disco song and incorporated the blast into her 1990 song "Vogue." The Ninth Circuit explained that Madonna did not infringe because "a reasonable juror could not conclude that the average audience would recognize the appropriation of the horn sound." Therefore, her sampling was de minimus and did not infringe.

This Ninth Circuit decision will impact the music world and likely lead to a U.S. Supreme Court decision that clarifies the legal limits of unauthorized sampling.