This is one reason I'm afraid of improvements in automatic music transcription systems. Once it becomes easy to search any voice of any piece of music ever recorded, lawyers will be trawling music search engines day and night looking for common subsequences.
This is also another example of why I think laches should be a defense against copyright infringement. If it takes you three decades to realise your copyright is being violated by someone in the same country as you ...
I was watching that show when that question aired. At the time I thought it was a joke, because the flute sample didn't sound like that much like the original kookaburra song. But if the information came from the songwriters themselves, well...
Personally I hope this fails. And I regret now having that song stuck in my head.
This is also another example of why I think laches should be a defense against copyright infringement. If it takes you three decades to realise your copyright is being violated by someone in the same country as you ...