We hope that the following discussion may suggest the potential of music notation software to provide more efficient and effective methods of establishing or disproving similarities between musical works than those that have been used until now in music plagiarism suits. Most of the techniques offered here of manipulating musical data have been anticipated by musicians who have testified in music copyright cases with cumbersome diagrams, audiotapes, and perhaps even an instrument (the first appearance of which must inevitably spark a distracting frisson among those in the courtroom). The efficiency, however, with which one can carry out these musical manipulations using notation software, the excellent audio and graphic renditions it produces, and the ease of dissemination of graphic and audio files associated with digital scores, are among the advantages of applying this relatively new technology to this curious intersection of music and law.

Our discussion considers first the applications of notation software and the use of the software itself to demonstrate the similarities or differences between two or more musical works. Second, we consider use of search engines to retrieve prior art from thematic or full score collections of digital music data. Our objective is not to attempt an exhaustive treatment of the applications of these technologies, but rather to provoke readers to experiment with them, or at least to reflect upon their potential efficacy in this area. We have posed a number of questions too, that we hope readers will respond to given our aim to have the site present, eventually, diverse viewpoints on the issues it raises.