New Orleans’ John Minor Wisdom U.S. Courthouse. Photo Credit: Bobak Ha’Eri
Do U.S. copyright terminations extend to international markets? The Society of Composers & Lyricists and the Songwriters Guild of America believe so, and they’re weighing in on a high-stakes case revolving around the important question.
The mentioned organizations (and a few others operating outside the music space) explained their position in an amicus brief supporting “Double Shot (Of My Baby’s Love)” songwriter Cyril Vetter.
Back in February, Vetter scored a massive legal win when a federal court ruled that he could reclaim the rights to the noted 1963 work in all territories. As many know, Section 203 of the Copyright Act is said to enable rights-transfer terminations on non-work-for-hire creations 35 years after the fact.
Consequently, a number of legacy acts – most recently Salt-n-Pepa – have moved to capitalize with related notices and assume ownership of their IP. Especially in an industry where the hits of yesteryear remain commercially prominent, labels and publishers aren’t wild about copyright terminations, to put it mildly.
And the February ruling kicked things up a notch by determining that stateside copyright terminations extend not just to the U.S., of course, but to rights assigned globally. Unsurprisingly, the company (Resnik Music Group) on the opposite side of the far-reaching ruling promptly appealed.
Enter the initially highlighted comments from the Society of Composers & Lyricists and the Songwriters Guild of America, which are of the belief that the worldwide-termination “interpretation protects authors.”
“Granting authors the broadest possible termination right, unlimited in geographical scope, is consistent with the Constitution, the statutory text of sections 203 and 304, and the intent of the Framers and of Congress,” they wrote.
In support of the stance – which covers several angles across 25 detailed pages – the organizations pointed first to lawmakers’ original intent.
“If Congress intended to limit reversion to exploitation in the United States,” they indicated, “surely Congress would have said so explicitly as it did when it excluded derivative works and works made for hire. But Congress did not do so.”
Furthermore, confining terminations to the States would create “a loophole large enough to drive a truck through,” per the entities, referring to “copies legally manufactured abroad and imported into the United States to compete with those authorized by the author.”
That, the Songwriters Guild of America and others penned, “would eviscerate the terminating author’s exclusive domestic rights.” Moreover, as the nonprofits see things, “savvy publishers” would easily exploit the loophole by importing lawful international exploitations into the States.
“Now the American market – meant to belong exclusively to the author who exercises their termination right – becomes a free-for-all of competing grey market import copies,” they spelled out.
Lastly, while non-exploitation isn’t too much of a factor in the music world, affirming the prior ruling on international recaptures would allow “an author to take back rights from a publisher who, though having received them, has chosen not to exploit them, leaving the work to languish,” the filing parties communicated.
Copyright, Music Industry News, Music Law, 25-30108, 3:23-cv-01369
This post was originally authored and published by Dylan Smith Digital Music News via RSS Feed. Join today to get your news feed on Nationwide Report®.
