Pelham lost in court to Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider of Kraftwerk for copyright infringement, but was acquitted after an appeal.
[2] However, in July 2019, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) overturned the appeal, ruling in favour of Kraftwerk.
[3][4][5][6][7] The ruling means that samples which are recognisable infringe copyright law where no permission has been sought from the rightsholder.
The case was referred back to the German court who gave the final decision.
[9] However, as copyright law had changed in the meantime, this ruling only applied to the timeframe December 22, 2002 and June 7, 2021.