{"id":11012,"date":"2026-06-21T12:32:03","date_gmt":"2026-06-21T12:32:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/major-labels-ask-supreme-court-to-overturn-music-copyright-ruling\/"},"modified":"2026-06-21T12:32:03","modified_gmt":"2026-06-21T12:32:03","slug":"major-labels-ask-supreme-court-to-overturn-music-copyright-ruling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/major-labels-ask-supreme-court-to-overturn-music-copyright-ruling\/","title":{"rendered":"Major Labels Ask Supreme Court To Overturn Music Copyright Ruling"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tThe major music companies filed a hotly-anticipated case at the U.S. Supreme Court aimed at reversing a first-ever ruling on copyright termination, calling it a \u201cprofoundly wrong\u201d decision they say will cause \u201cchaos\u201d for the music business.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe ruling, won in January by songwriter Cyril Vetter, said artists can use termination to regain not only American copyrights, but also overseas rights to the same songs \u2014 overturning decades of precedent and industry practice. It was hailed as a \u201cgame-changer\u201d for musicians, but seen as dangerously incorrect by publishers, labels and investors.<\/p>\n

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\n\tIn a June 11 petition obtained and first reported by Billboard <\/em>on Wednesday (June 17), the major labels didn\u2019t hold back \u2014 calling Vetter a \u201cheadscratching\u201d and \u201cstartling\u201d ruling that would be \u201cevery bit as disruptive as it sounds\u201d if it was not quickly reversed by the high court.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn a single stroke, the decision below unsettled 50 years of industry practice,\u201d writes Paul Clement<\/strong>, the elite Supreme Court attorney representing Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment, as well as BMG. \u201c[It] immediately calls into question the scope and meaning of countless negotiated agreements backed by billions of dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTermination gives songwriters and other creators a chance to recapture their rights decades after they sold them away. But it has only ever applied to U.S. copyrights and had no effect on rights in foreign countries. Under that approach, labels, publishers and investors continue to control overseas rights even after termination. That gives them a major source of perpetual revenue in a globalized streaming era, not to mention veto power over cross-border projects and key leverage in deal re-negotiations.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn January\u2019s ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit rejected that longstanding precedent. Siding with Vetter in his quest to win back ownership of the 1963 rock classic \u201cDouble Shot (Of My Baby\u2019s Love),\u201d the court said Congress had written the termination statute with the goal of correcting \u201cunequal bargaining power,\u201d and thus clearly did not intend for authors to win back \u201conly half of the apple\u201d when they invoke the law.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut in their Supreme Court petition, the labels said that ruling was clearly legally incorrect. They cited language of the statute that termination \u201cin no way affects rights arising under any foreign laws,\u201d which they argued had been \u201cuniversally understood\u201d before the Vetter case.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFor decades, virtually no one even tried to argue that the statute\u2019s plain text could be read any other way,\u201d the labels wrote. \u201cThe Fifth Circuit\u2019s decision not only marks a dramatic split from decades of contrary authority, but is also profoundly wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs expected, Clement\u2019s pitch to the justices focused heavily on the practical impact of the ruling, which he argued has already begun to \u201csow confusion\u201d and cause \u201cchaos\u201d \u2014 not just for music companies, but also for movie studios, other entertainment industries and creators themselves.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe Fifth Circuit has upended the prevailing background rules around which creative industries do business,\u201d Clement wrote for the music firms. \u201cThis indeterminacy is crippling, and it reinforces why the entire creative ecosystem\u2026 needs an answer now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMaking an unexpected appearance in last week\u2019s petition was Paul McCartney, who famously sued Sony Music in 2017 over his efforts to take back Beatles songs via termination. The labels cited that case to point out that copyrights are typically broken down on a country-by-country basis. If Vetter\u2019s theory is upheld, the labels argued, McCartney never could have pursued that case.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cEven though Sir Paul remains a British subject and \u2018Yesterday\u2019 and \u2018Hey Jude\u2019 are U.K. works, and even though U.K. law currently has nothing like [termination], the uniform understanding has been that McCartney nonetheless has distinct U.S. rights in those musical works that he could recapture,\u201d the labels wrote.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt times, the petition took aim at the opposing lawyers themselves, Tim Kappel<\/strong> and Loren Wells<\/strong>. Clement quoted repeatedly from a legal article the pair wrote about the Vetter case, in which they noted that their lawsuit had advanced a previously \u201cfringe\u201d theory that ran counter to existing precedents.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\u201cDisruption was the whole point of this lawsuit: As respondents have forthrightly admitted, their \u2018ultimate goal\u2019 was to \u2018give terminating songwriters leverage they never had before\u2019 \u2014 and to sow confusion about the status and validity of innumerable author-publisher agreements, many decades old and worth millions,\u201d Clement wrote. \u201cThe resulting chaos benefits no one.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a response statement to Billboard<\/em> on Wednesday, Kappel said: \u201cAs one would expect, the petition is well-written. But it covers no real new ground and traffics in the same arguments that were rejected by the courts below. We look forward to responding.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFollowing the petition, Vetter will have a chance to file his own brief in response by next month. When he does so, Kappel and Wells will be joined by Joshua Rosenkranz<\/strong>, an elite Supreme Court litigator at the law firm Orrick. Rosenkranz has handled several major SCOTUS copyright cases, including winning this year\u2019s big decision for Cox Communications in a billion-dollar piracy case filed by the major labels.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter briefing, the justices will then privately vote on whether to take the case, releasing their decision at some point in the next few months. Though it has big implications for the music business, the chances of Supreme Court review aren\u2019t great in any case. The justices hear only a small fraction of the thousands of petitions they receive each year, and the high court might instead prefer to wait for another case that directly conflicts with the Vetter ruling before tackling the issue.<\/p>\n


\"Billboard
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The major music companies filed a hotly-anticipated case at the U.S. Supreme Court aimed at reversing a first-ever ruling on copyright termination, calling it a \u201cprofoundly wrong\u201d decision […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11013,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[429,143,1423,197,593,942,686,533],"class_list":["post-11012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-copyright","tag-court","tag-labels","tag-major","tag-music","tag-overturn","tag-ruling","tag-supreme"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11012","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=11012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}