Songwriter urges Supreme Court to reject labels' bid in copyright fight
Cyril Vetter has asked the US Supreme Court to leave his victory alone.
The songwriter behind the 1963 single "Double Shot (Of My Baby's Love)" filed a brief on Monday, Sept. 14, urging the justices to reject a challenge from the world's largest music companies. At stake is who controls his song outside the United States.
The dispute turns on termination, the US copyright rule that lets a writer take back rights once signed to a publisher after a fixed period. In January, a federal appeals court ruled that Vetter should get back everything. That included foreign markets. It broke with the prior approach, under which termination applied only to US copyrights.
Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and BMG now want that January decision overturned. The four companies bought out the small publisher originally involved in the Vetter case to bring the fight to the Supreme Court, Billboard reported.
Their language has been blunt. The companies called the appeals ruling "profoundly wrong" and warned it will cause "chaos" for the music business. In a June opening brief, they said the decision had "unsettled 50 years of industry practice" and affected deals worth billions of dollars. Those deals were priced, they argue, on the understanding that a US termination stopped at the US border.
Vetter's lawyers answer in plain terms. There is no emergency. Publishers are "doing just fine" and can afford to sit down with writers to agree fairer shares. The money in songs, they suggest, allows room for negotiation rather than court rescue.
The Sept. 14 brief was filed by attorneys Tim Kappel and Loren Wells, alongside Joshua Rosenkranz and his firm Orrick. It asks the court to refuse the companies' petition and keep the appeals ruling in place in his favour.
What makes this stand out is scale. The case began with one 1963 song. A decision on whether to hear it will affect how termination is read for many other writers and catalogues. Publishing splits, the agreed shares of song income between writers and publishers, and master rights, the ownership of original recordings, often turn on who controls which territory in a globalised market organised around worldwide licences.
Termination cases usually turn on US law. The question here is whether that reclaim also pulls back rights licensed for use abroad, from radio play to streaming and sync. For now, the papers are filed and the January ruling stands unless the justices agree to review it.
