Plagiarism claims in the pop world have been running rampant recently, in the form of both formal lawsuits as well as snide jabs in the media. Avril Lavigne, for example, just got slapped with a lawsuit alleging she plagiarized a Rubinoo’s's 1979 single, "“I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend."”

Lavigne’'s manager, Terry McBride, went so far as to order up a study by musicologists, who found no significant similarities between chords, melodies, lyrics, or meter. But then there are the lyrics: the Rubinoo’s's song refrain is "“Hey! Hey! You! You! I want to be your boyfriend." Lavigne’'s is "“Hey! Hey! You! You! I wanna be your girlfriend."” The Rubinoo’s songwriters aren'’t the first to accuse Lavigne of being criminally unoriginal, though. Singer Chantal Kreviazuk stated in Performing Songwriter magazine that Lavigne plagiarized one of her songs, though she isn’'t pressing charges.

Also this week, an Icelandic artist named Jóhann Helgason filed charges against the songwriter who wrote the song made famous by Josh Groban, "“You Raise Me Up."” Though Helgason’'s song "“Söknuôur”" is a classic in Iceland, it never made its way overseas. "“You Raise Me Up"” songwriter Rolf Løvland, however, hails from Norway, giving him convenient proximity to Icelandic news and culture. Helgason’'s reported similarity analysis between the two songs pits the likeness as high as 97 percent.

Then there's the plagiarism claim filed against N*Sync, who broke up in 2002. Artist Troy Alexander, who does not explain why he waited half a decade to file this suit, gave the boy band’'s label, Jive Records, a demo tape for his song "“Up Against The Wall,"” which he claims has “substantial similarities” to the track of the same name off of N*Sync's Celebrity.

And, of course, bloggers are frequently confident they've cracked cases of blatant copycatting. Recently, one such Net scribe noticed similarities between the French song "“La Genie”" and Beyoncé’'s "“Naughty Girl.”" Beyoncé is no stranger to lawsuits, having been involved in plagiarism claims for such songs as "“Baby Boy,"” "“Survivor," "“Independent Woman," and "Kissing You."

If anything, this all proves that the more money and fame an artist has, the more wronged singer-songwriters come out of the woodwork to file lawsuits. Either that, or the pop world is peppered with plagiarists banking on lifted ditties and absconded melodies.... Nah!