More than a year after the case was first presented in a Vancouver courtroom and five months after final arguments were presented, a Canadian judge has dismissed a musician's copyright infringement claim against Lilith Fair founder Sarah McLachlan [ tickets ].

Darryl Neudorf, a former drummer for the Canadian band 54-40, claimed he deserved a co-writing credit and payment for four songs from McLachlan's 1998 debut album, ''Touch.'' He is credited on the album for ''pre-production co-ordination and production assistance,'' for which he was paid about $3,300.

In three of the four songs at issue--''Vox,'' ''Sad Clown'' and ''Strange World''--Neudorf didn't contribute sufficient original material to meet the legal standard for a credit, according to the judge's finding. The judge dismissed the co-ownership claim on the fourth song, ''Steaming,'' because Neudorf couldn't prove that he and McLachlan ''shared an intent to co-author the song,'' according to a prepared statement issued by McLachlan's label, Nettwerk Productions.

The judge's 151-page decision said that his opinion was heavily swayed by the fact that Neudorf didn't claim to be a co-author of the songs until about a decade after the release of ''Touch,'' according to Nettwerk.

''Care must be taken to ensure that true collaborators in the creative process are accorded the perquisites of co-authorship and to guard against the risk that a sole author is denied exclusive authorship status simply because another person rendered some form of assistance,'' British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Bruce Cohen wrote in his decision. ''Copyright law best serves the interests of creativity when it carefully draws the bounds of 'joint authorship' so as to protect the legitimate claims of both sole authors and co-authors.''

''Touch,'' which was initially released exclusively in Canada, has sold 625,000 copies worldwide to date. The majority of those albums were sold as McLachlan developed into a multi-platinum artist, long after the release was first put on the market. McLachlan was 20 years old when ''Touch'' was released, and the album is credited with helping her to land a distribution deal in the U.S.