Computer love: EU top court backs Kraftwerk in sampling case German legislation on exceptions and limitations to copyright is not compatible with EU law, court also rules.

Unauthorized, recognizable sampling can infringe copyright protections, the EU's top court ruled Monday.

"Sampling without authorization can infringe a phonogram producer’s rights," the Court of Justice of the European Union said in a statement. "However, the use of a sound sample taken from a phonogram in a modified form unrecognizable to the ear does not infringe those rights, even without such authorization."

Sampling is a technique used in music, especially in rap and electronic music, which consists of digitally encoding music and reusing it in another song, sometimes with modifications.

The case pits two members of the German electronic music band Kraftwerk, Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider-Esleben, against composers Moses Pelham and Martin Haas.

Hütter and Schneider-Esleben say Pelham copied 2 seconds of a rhythm sequence from their 1977 song "Metall auf Metall" by sampling it for the song "Nur mir."

According to the Court of Justice, unauthorized inclusion of a sound sample can infringe the rights of the phonogram producer, as long as the sample is recognizable. If not, it is not considered to be a "reproduction."

Germany's Federal Court of Justice also asked judges in Luxembourg to assess the German legislation on exceptions and limitations to copyright, which allows free use.

"The German legislation ... provides for an exception or limitation not referred to under EU law allowing a distinct work, created in the free use of a protected work, in principle, to be published and exploited without the consent of the rightholders, is not in conformity with EU law," the court ruled.