{"id":3967,"date":"2025-02-01T00:07:33","date_gmt":"2025-02-01T00:07:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/copyright-court-ruling-says-termination-rights-have-global-reach\/"},"modified":"2025-02-01T00:07:33","modified_gmt":"2025-02-01T00:07:33","slug":"copyright-court-ruling-says-termination-rights-have-global-reach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/copyright-court-ruling-says-termination-rights-have-global-reach\/","title":{"rendered":"Copyright Court Ruling Says Termination Rights Have Global Reach"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tA Louisiana federal judge has finalized an unusual legal decision that says American copyright termination rules apply not just stateside but also across the globe, unswayed by warnings that it will cause \u201cdestabilization of long-settled business practices\u201d in the music industry.<\/p>\n

\n\tRuling on a dispute over the 1963 rock classic \u201cDouble Shot (Of My Baby\u2019s Love),\u201d Judge Shelly Dick said Thursday that songwriter Cyril Vetter could win back full copyright ownership to the track from publisher Resnik Music Group via termination \u2014 an important federal provision that allows artists to take back their rights decades after they sold them away.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat makes the ruling notable is that Judge Dick said Vetter could recapture rights to the song \u201cthroughout the world,\u201d not just in the U.S. That\u2019s a big departure from the status quo under longstanding legal precedents, which say that reversions apply only to the American market and have no effect on rights in foreign countries.<\/p>\n

\n\tResnik has warned that such a decision will be deeply disruptive to the music industry. In court filings, the company has argued it will \u201cupend\u201d existing practices and could even violate international treaty obligations: \u201cThe result would be chaos \u2026 rather than the orderly system that the nations of the world have in fact developed over more than a century.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMusic attorneys have also taken notice. Tal Dickstein<\/strong>, a prominent litigator at the law firm Loeb & Loeb, wrote in August<\/a> that Judge Dick was \u201cbreaking with existing precedent\u201d by extending the power of termination overseas. Eric J. Schwartz<\/strong>, an attorney at the firm Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp, said the ruling would be a \u201cmajor upheaval\u201d<\/a> if upheld (though he said that \u201cseems unlikely\u201d). Bill Hochberg<\/strong>, another longtime music attorney, went much further<\/a>, saying the \u201cDouble Shot\u201d case could \u201cradically revolutionize the way the music business runs\u201d and might be \u201cfinancially devastating\u201d for large entertainment companies.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe ruling for Vetter \u2014 largely explained in an earlier decision<\/a> last summer and finalized in Thursday\u2019s judgment<\/a> \u2014 is likely to be challenged at a federal appeals court; defense attorneys already attempted to file an appeal at an earlier stage in the case. An attorney for Resnik did not immediately return a request for comment on the ruling on Friday (Jan. 31).<\/p>\n

\n\tIf it were to be adopted in courts across the country, Judge Dick\u2019s approach would be a boon for songwriters and their heirs. Under existing precedent and practices, publishers often continue to own foreign rights even after a U.S. termination, giving them potential veto power over cross-border projects and a bargaining chip in negotiations with the artist. Under the new ruling, songwriters would get back all<\/em> of their rights, not just their American copyright.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor Tim Kappel<\/strong>, the attorney who represented Vetter in the case, that\u2019s exactly the point \u2014 helping songwriters truly get the artist-friendly protections that federal lawmakers envisioned when they created the termination right in the 1970s.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe [ruling] is consistent\u00a0with Congress\u2019 intent to provide creators with a second chance to benefit from the fruits of their labor,\u201d Kappel tells Billboard<\/em>. \u201cThere\u2019s a fundamental fairness to that result that Mr. Vetter is dedicated to defending.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAsked about the cries of \u201cchaos\u201d from his opponents, Kappel called those claims \u201cspeculative and fairly alarmist.\u201d As to whether the ruling will \u201cdestabilize\u201d music industry practices, he said those practices might just be ripe for disruption.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cA court is not bound to interpret the Copyright Act so as to conform to comfortable business practices,\u201d Kappel said. \u201cIn fact, to the extent these business practices rely on misguided legal\u00a0theories that prevent artists and writers from receiving the full benefit of their termination rights, we believe such practices are rightfully destabilized.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Louisiana federal judge has finalized an unusual legal decision that says American copyright termination rules apply not just stateside but also across the globe, unswayed by warnings […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3968,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[429,143,1043,1885,408,686,1954],"class_list":["post-3967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-copyright","tag-court","tag-global","tag-reach","tag-rights","tag-ruling","tag-termination"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3967","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=3967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3967\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}