{"id":10122,"date":"2026-04-01T05:28:38","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T05:28:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/salt-n-pepa-appeal-to-revive-umg-music-ownership-lawsuit\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T05:28:38","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T05:28:38","slug":"salt-n-pepa-appeal-to-revive-umg-music-ownership-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/salt-n-pepa-appeal-to-revive-umg-music-ownership-lawsuit\/","title":{"rendered":"Salt-N-Pepa Appeal to Revive UMG Music Ownership Lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tSalt-N-Pepa argue in a new appeal brief that a judge was wrong to dismiss the duo\u2019s high-stakes music ownership lawsuit against Universal Music Group (UMG).<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Tuesday (March 31) court filing at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals is the opening bout in a fight by Cheryl \u201cSalt\u201d James and Sandra \u201cPepa\u201d Denton to revive their copyright case against the world\u2019s largest music company. The iconic hip-hop duo sued UMG last year for refusing to honor its so-called \u201ctermination rights,\u201d a tenet of copyright law that allows artists to claw back ownership of their master recordings decades after signing them away.<\/p>\n

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\n\tA New York federal judge threw out the claims in January, determining that Salt-N-Pepa had no termination rights because the duo did not actually sign its 1986 record deal with Next Plateau Records. Rather, that contract was between Next Plateau (which was later sold to London Records, then absorbed by UMG) and Noise in the Attic Productions, a company that was controlled by Salt-N-Pepa\u2019s music producer, Hurby \u201cLuv Bug\u201d Azor<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\n\tRichard Busch<\/strong>, the veteran music attorney newly hired to represent Salt-N-Pepa on appeal, says in Tuesday\u2019s brief that this dismissal decision was \u201criddled with error.\u201d According to Busch, the lower court ignored the fact that Salt-N-Pepa owned its music when it was created, and that the duo was the one to begin a long \u201cchain of grants\u201d via its own 1986 recording contract with Azor.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen correctly interpreted, the 1986 agreements together should be read to mean that the copyrights originated with Salt-N-Pepa, and then were transferred to Noise in the Attic, then Next Plateau, next to London, and eventually to UMG,\u201d writes Busch. \u201cBecause Section 203 expressly contemplates that terminations would be binding and effective against successors in interest, and because the seminal grant of rights came from the authors (Salt-N-Pepa), their termination notices are effective to terminate UMG\u2019s rights reverting them to Salt-N-Pepa.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSalt-N-Pepa\u2019s brief also zooms out to alert the Second Circuit to some bigger picture concerns in the duo\u2019s appeal. Busch writes that Congress created termination rights \u201cto rectify the imbalance of bargaining power that all artists face when negotiating with entities to exploit their works\u201d \u2014 and that the rap duo\u2019s 1986 record deal memorialized this exact type of imbalance.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\u201cThe lasting success of Salt-N-Pepa\u2019s catalog has been a windfall for UMG and its predecessors-in-interest \u2014\u00a0indeed, the catalog generated approximately $1 million in royalties in the five months preceding this lawsuit, alone,\u201d reads the appeal brief. \u201cUnder the relevant agreements, UMG has enjoyed the lion\u2019s share of these royalties.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a statement to Billboard <\/em>on Tuesday, Busch said, \u201cThis is a very important case for all recording artists, and, respectfully, as we make clear in our brief, we believe the district court got it wrong. We look forward to being heard by the Second Circuit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tA rep for UMG did not immediately return a request for comment on Salt-N-Pepa\u2019s brief. The company is scheduled to file its own brief in response in May.<\/p>\n

\n\tTermination rights have become a hot-button issue in music law in recent years. Artists such as 2 Live Crew have gone to court to win back their catalogs, and others asserted their termination rights en masse via class-action litigation against UMG and Sony. Both majors ultimately settled those lawsuits in 2024.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the past, termination rights have generally been considered to apply only to U.S. copyright grants. But that\u2019s now up in the air after a first-of-its-kind appeals court ruling held this summer that termination rights can also be asserted overseas \u2014 potentially upending decades of industry practice. This week, units of all three majors announced that they\u2019d bought out the copyright at issue in that case so they can take it to the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n


\"Billboard
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Salt-N-Pepa argue in a new appeal brief that a judge was wrong to dismiss the duo\u2019s high-stakes music ownership lawsuit against Universal Music Group (UMG). The Tuesday (March […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10123,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[366,303,593,4069,4559,6015,1109],"class_list":["post-10122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-appeal","tag-lawsuit","tag-music","tag-ownership","tag-revive","tag-saltnpepa","tag-umg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}