{"id":9196,"date":"2025-12-22T22:48:33","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T22:48:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/sonny-bonos-widow-appeals-loss-in-cher-royalties-lawsuit\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T16:40:33","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T16:40:33","slug":"sonny-bonos-widow-appeals-loss-in-cher-royalties-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/sonny-bonos-widow-appeals-loss-in-cher-royalties-lawsuit\/","title":{"rendered":"Sonny Bono\u2019s Widow Appeals Loss in Cher Royalties Lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tA year and a half after Cher won a legal victory preserving her right to publishing royalties from her songs with Sonny Bono, Sonny\u2019s widow Mary Bono<\/strong> is now challenging the ruling on appeal.<\/p>\n

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\n\tMary has been fighting in court to stop paying royalties to Cher under the so-called termination right, under which artists and their heirs can win back control of intellectual property decades after signing it away. But a California federal judge ruled last year that termination rules do not apply to Sonny & Cher\u2019s 1978 divorce settlement, which gave Cher a permanent 50% cut of publishing revenue from 1960s hits like \u201cI Got You Babe,\u201d \u201cThe Beat Goes On\u201d and \u201cBaby Don\u2019t Go.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile U.S. District Judge John A. Kronstadt<\/strong> ruled in Cher\u2019s favor back in May 2024, the decision wasn\u2019t made official until a final judgment entered this past November. Mary Bono\u2019s attorney, Daniel Schacht<\/strong>, appealed that judgment to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday (Dec. 22).<\/p>\n

\n\tTermination rights have become a hot topic in music law in recent years. Incorporated into the federal Copyright Act, the legislative provision allows artists who sign away their publishing or master recordings to claw back those ownership rights after 35 years.<\/p>\n

\n\tLast year, Sony Music and Universal Music Group (UMG) both reached class action settlements with musicians who wanted to regain control of master recordings. And this past May, Salt-N-Pepa sued UMG for rejecting the legendary hip-hop duo\u2019s attempt to exercise their own termination rights.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the Cher case, which dates back to 2021, Mary Bono argued that she should be able to invoke her termination rights to cancel Sonny\u2019s assignment of royalties to Cher in the divorce settlement. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Judge Kronstadt ruled in 2024 that the divorce agreement was a contract for financial compensation, not a grant of intellectual property that is subject to termination. \u201cA right to receive royalties is distinct from a grant of copyright,\u201d the judge wrote.<\/p>\n

\n\tMary\u2019s attorneys will now challenge this reasoning at the Ninth Circuit. At the time of the ruling, Schact told Billboard <\/em>that Judge Kronstadt \u201cgot the law wrong on copyright terminations\u201d and that the decision set a dangerous precedent for the music industry.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHis ruling, if left standing, would hurt songwriters and creators by allowing not just former spouses, but also publishers and labels, to circumvent the Copyright Act and keep shares of royalties even after terminations,\u201d Schact said back in 2024.<\/p>\n

\n\tSchact did not immediately return a request for comment on Monday, nor did Cher\u2019s lawyers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A year and a half after Cher won a legal victory preserving her right to publishing royalties from her songs with Sonny Bono, Sonny\u2019s widow Mary Bono is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9197,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[782,1472,1470,303,1565,1219,1471,1473],"class_list":["post-9196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-appeals","tag-bonos","tag-cher","tag-lawsuit","tag-loss","tag-royalties","tag-sonny","tag-widow"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9196","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=9196"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9406,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9196\/revisions\/9406"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}