I am uneasy how many UKers are apparently confident of the relevant US law. I am usually cautious on US copyright law and I did once read Nimmer (the principal US copyright textbook) from end-to-end (all 4 volumes) and an obsolete edition of my friend Tom Selz's 4 volume textbook on Entertainment law is just above my head on my bookshelf.

I am by no means clear that an arrangement has to be copied note for note for there to be an infringment of an arrangement, and both in the UK and the US members of bands have succeeded in claims to be joint authors of a work on the bases of short sections of notes and on drum patterns.

More relevantly, the US has a much wider law than the UK relating to words and phrases acquiring a secondary meaning that (imprecisely and in shorthand) amounts to a common law trade mark, which is the basis of current US assertions of rights in Sherlock Holmes although the literary works are now long out of copyright, and it is not inconceivable that a similar assertion could be made under US law for a phrase in or presentation of a song if it became part of the reputation of the performer - compare the Johnny Carson "Here's Johnny" case in which Carson successfully objected to his catchphrase (which was not a relevant registered trade mark) being used as a slogan for portable lavatories. On the other hand "the Salamander" lost all his cases and so did a cowboy character whose fictitious identity escapes me at the moment!