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Men at Work up a gum tree
It's alleged that the iconic aussie hit, first released in 1981, borrows a melody from children's classic Kookaburra, penned by teacher Marion Sinclair in 1934, specifically that the melody which sits behind the line "Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree" is identical to the flute riff in the MAW song.
The court stoush was initiated back in 2007, after ABC TV's Spicks and Specks pointed out a possible link 'twixt the two tunes.
The band and their record companies argued that the Kookaburra copyright was never properly signed over by Ms Sinclair - who died in 1988 - and that it still belongs to the Girl Guides movement.
However, a Sydney court has ruled that the Larrikin does indeed own the copyright, clearing the way for a plagiarism case.
No date has been set for the next hearing.
Source: BBC News 
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Artist Biography
Men at Work are an Australian rock band who achieved international success in the 1980s. They are the only Australian artists to have a simultaneous #1 album and #1 single in the United States. They achieved the same distinction of a simultaneous #1 album and #1 single in the United Kingdom. The group won the 1983 Grammy Award for Best New Artist, and have sold over 30 million albums worldwide.
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Comments
I personally think Copyright needs a huge overhaul.
1. Copyright should not be transferable
2. Copyright should be invalidated on the death of the author/creator
It IS a shame that, if the Men at works song was written KNOWINGLY copying the tune from Kookaburra, that the author of Kookaburra did not share in any royalties. But, However sad, the author of Kookaburra is now deceased. Kookaburra should now be public, and Men at Work should be left alone!
Here is more information:
See Wikipedia:
Cultural references
"Kookaburra" is sung to the same tune as the Welsh folk song "Wele ti'n eistedd aderyn du?" or "Dacw di yn eistedd, y 'deryn du" (Rough English translation "See you there, that black bird sitting?"). This traditional Welsh nonsense poem is much older than the song "Kookaburra", but, similar to a number of Welsh folk songs that originated from Welsh poems that were later sung to other, more well-known tunes - the most famous of these being "Ble Mae Daniel?" ("Where is Daniel?") sung to the tune of "London's Burning" - the poem was adapted to fit the tune "Kookaburra" in the 1960s by the Urdd Gobaith Cymru (The Welsh League of Youth) movement, as the syllables in the Welsh poem are almost identical in pattern to those in "Kookaburra".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kookaburra_(song)
And of course, I was alerted to this by someone else who posted somewhere else:
http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=121812&messages=17
Larrikin Records sounds like a good setup. But I am personally opposed to the control of historical or traditional tunes by ANY corporation or business.
Maybe both party's should listen to "The Devil came to Georgia". Slow the the song down a bit and sing the lines.
"Fire on the Mountain Run Boy Run,
The Devil's in the House of the Rising' Sun"
Pretty similar sequence of notes.
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