Supreme Court Upholds Copyright Termination Ruling for Songwriters

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a challenge from the publishing arms of several major music companies, leaving in place a copyright termination ruling from the New Orleans-based Fifth Circuit that carries major consequences for who controls classic songs. The appeals court held that a federal law letting creators terminate old copyright transfers and reclaim their rights applies around the world, not only to American copyrights. By declining to take the case, the justices let that interpretation stand. Reuters reported that the challenge came from the publishing divisions of BMG, Sony Music, Universal Music Group and Warner Music, which argued the Fifth Circuit's reading of the law was dangerously wrong.

The dispute centered on songwriter Cyril Vetter and a 1960s rock and roll hit he wrote with the late Donald Smith, "Double Shot (Of My Baby's Love)." Vetter and Smith wrote the song in 1962, and it became famous through the Swingin' Medallions' 1966 recording. A year after writing it, the pair transferred their copyrights to Windsong Music Publishers, a standard arrangement at the time. Smith died in a plane crash in 1972, and Vetter later sought to reclaim the rights. According to the Reuters account, Vetter won before the Fifth Circuit, which agreed that the termination right reaches foreign exploitation of the song as well as domestic use.

The law that lets artists take their songs back

Copyright termination is one of the few provisions of federal copyright law written explicitly to favor the artist over the company that bought the rights. Under the version that applies to older works, an author or the author's heirs can terminate a transfer of copyright made before 1978 once the grant is at least 56 years old, so long as the work was not created as a work for hire. Congress built the provision for the unknown songwriter who signed a publishing deal in a moment of no leverage, then watched the song earn money for decades. The condition is narrow: the grant must be old enough, the paperwork must fall in the right window, and the creator must follow the notice requirements. But when those boxes are checked, the rights revert.

Until the Fifth Circuit weighed in, a live question hung over that rule: did the reclaimed rights extend to how the song is used outside the United States, or did the labels keep collecting on foreign streams, sales and licenses? The appeals court's answer was the broader one. A songwriter who terminates a grant now regains the song everywhere, at least for catalogs governed by the Fifth Circuit's precedent. For aging hits whose value comes from sync placements and global streaming, that distinction decides who gets paid for the next decade of a song's life. Veteran acts are meanwhile leaning on live revenue as catalog economics shift, with tours like Megadeth's farewell run with Anthrax and Kerry King showing the demand for legacy catalogs on stage.

Why the labels wanted it stopped

The labels fought the case hard. In their Supreme Court appeal, the publishing arms argued that letting the Fifth Circuit ruling stand would cause chaos across the industry and threaten agreements worth billions of dollars. Music publishing runs on predictability: catalogs are bought, sold and securitized on the assumption that the chain of title is settled. A ruling that hands swaths of old songs back to their writers scrambles those assumptions and forces buyers to discount every aging catalog they own. The labels also warned that writers could now time their terminations to extract better terms, shifting negotiating power away from the publishers.

The Supreme Court never reached the merits. Four of the nine justices did not participate in consideration of the appeal, offering no rationale for their recusals. The remaining justices determined that the case could not be resolved in the coming term, which meant the lower court's ruling stood by default. The order gave no explanation beyond that, and the practical result is unchanged: the Fifth Circuit's global reading of the termination right remains the law for the cases it covers.

What this means for musicians now

For working songwriters, the practical lesson is paperwork. Termination only works when the original grant qualifies and the statutory notice is filed correctly and on time, so artists with old songs in circulation have reason to audit their catalogs and check whether any grants are approaching eligibility. Publishers, meanwhile, face a colder market for vintage catalogs, since any buyer now has to price in the chance that the writer reclaims the rights. The ruling also lands in the middle of a broader fight over who gets paid for music: Digital Music News reported that Musixmatch is acquiring Music Reports, owner of the Songdex catalog database, as the lyrics company expands into rights and royalties tracking, a sign that the infrastructure for paying musicians is being rebuilt from several directions at once. New records keep the catalog business moving in the meantime, from Cardinal Black's third album to the farewell tours filling arenas this year.

The decision was reported by Blake Brittain for Reuters on October 19, with additional detail in the full account: SRN News carried the Reuters story on the Supreme Court's rejection of the labels' challenge. With this copyright termination ruling now standing, the underlying question, whether an artist who takes a song back takes it back everywhere, has an answer the industry must live with.