GLADIATOR COMPOSER FACES COPYRIGHT BATTLE

Last updated: Sunday, June 11, 2006

GLADIATOR COMPOSER FACES COPYRIGHT BATTLE

GLADIATOR composer HANS ZIMMER is being sued by the Holst Foundation over claims the film's Oscar-nominated score is a copy of the late GUSTAV HOLST's famous PLANET SUITE.

If the foundation win their claim for infringement of copyright they could make millions of dollars, because sales of the film's soundtrack have gone platinum.

Despite Zimmer admitting on the album sleeve that he uses "the same language, the same vocabulary, if not the same syntax" as Holst, the music publishers who hold the copyright in Holst's works, J Curwen + Sons have decided to take legal action.

A Curwen spokesman says, "After a considerable period of discussion between the two parties it has become necessary to ask for the assistance of the courts."

The defence lawyer says, "Mr Zimmer's work on Gladiator is world-renowned and is not in any sense a copy of Mars. Just listening to the two works is enough to tell any listener this claim has no merit."

| Sunday, June 11, 2006

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