The majors and BMG asked the US Supreme Court to overturn a ruling that lets songwriters reclaim copyrights worldwide. Five things to know about Vetter v. Resnik

The major music companies and BMG have asked the US Supreme Court to overturn a ruling that lets songwriters reclaim the worldwide rights to their songs under American law.

In a petition filed on June 11, the rightsholders said the decision will cause “chaos” across the music business if it is allowed to stand.

The filing, which you can read in full here, asks the justices to reverse a January ruling from the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

Here are five things the music business needs to know.

1. The ruling would create a worldwide termination right – for the first time

Termination lets creators reclaim copyrights decades after they sign them away. Under the US Copyright Act of 1976, authors can take back rights after 35 years, or 56 years for works created before 1978.

For half a century, the industry view was that termination reached only US rights, with overseas rights staying with the publisher.

In January, the Fifth Circuit ruled that songwriter Cyril Vetter can recapture not just the US rights but the worldwide rights to Double Shot (Of My Baby’s Love), the 1963 rock song.

The three-judge panel affirmed an earlier ruling that Vetter and Vetter Communications Corporation are the song’s sole worldwide owners.

Vetter co-wrote the track with Donald Smith in 1962 and transferred the rights to Windsong Music Publishers in 1963. The disputed stake later passed to Resnik Music Group.

Circuit Judge Carl Stewart called the domestic-only reading “unpersuasive,” endorsing an argument from the Artists Rights Institute that denying authors the full worldwide return leaves them with “only half of the apple.”

The effect, if the ruling stands, is a worldwide termination right under US law.

The majors and BMG were not the original defendant.

In March, the publishing arms of Universal Music Group, Sony Music, and Warner Music Group, together with BMG, bought the disputed stake in the song from Resnik in order to take the case up.

The petitioners are named in the filing as Capitol CMG, Essential Music Publishing, Warner-Tamerlane Publishing, and BMG Rights Management.

2. It rests on a reading of the law that, for decades, almost no one made

The publishers say the ruling “departs from bedrock copyright law.”

The petition describes Vetter’s reading as a “fringe” theory that “bucks the common industry reading of the statute.”

They point to Section 304 of the Copyright Act, which says termination “in no way affects rights arising under any other Federal, State, or foreign laws.”

The Fifth Circuit instead seized on separate language – that termination affects rights that “arise under” the US Copyright Act – reasoning that Vetter‘s rights arose under US law.

The deeper question is how copyright works globally: whether the Berne Convention creates a separate copyright in every country, or a single home-country copyright enforced abroad.

For decades, “virtually no one even tried to argue” the text could be read Vetter’s way, the petition said.

The publishers note that the district court “dismissed five decades of precedent” before granting Vetter summary judgment in a seven-page opinion.

The domestic-only reading has been the publishers’ own position before. When The Jesus and Mary Chain moved to terminate, Warner Music Group said Section 203 covered only US rights and that it owned the recordings worldwide.

3. The industry calls it “chaos.” Songwriters call it the point.

“In a single stroke, the decision below unsettled 50 years of industry practice,” wrote Paul Clement, the former Solicitor General leading the petition.

The ruling immediately calls into question “the scope and meaning of countless negotiated agreements backed by billions of dollars,” he wrote.

Clement called the decision “profoundly wrong.”

Left unchecked, he argued, the ruling is “every bit as disruptive as it sounds,” adding that “the resulting chaos benefits no one.”

The RIAA and the National Music Publishers’ Association had earlier warned that the ruling “unsettles the bedrock understanding of foreign exploitation rights” behind tens of thousands of agreements.

Creator groups took the other side. A coalition led by the Music Artists Coalition filed an amicus brief, with co-founder and board member Susan Genco saying the case “could set a crucial precedent for creators in today’s global marketplace.”

Tim Kappel, the attorney who led Vetter’s case, has dismissed the “chaos” warnings as “speculative and fairly alarmist,” arguing that practices built on “misguided legal theories” are “rightfully destabilized,” Billboard reported.

4. The petition leans on Paul McCartney

The filing invoked Paul McCartney, who sued Sony/ATV in 2017 in his own bid to recapture US rights to Beatles songs through termination.

McCartney had filed to reclaim the US publishing rights to 178 Beatles compositions, which became eligible 56 years after 1962’s Love Me Do.

The music companies’ point is that copyrights are broken down country by country. Even though Yesterday and Hey Jude are UK works, and UK law has nothing like termination, McCartney still held “distinct U.S. rights in those musical works that he could recapture.”

Under Vetter’s theory, the companies argue, McCartney could never have brought that case.

The reverse has been tested too. Duran Duran tried to use US termination rules in a UK court, and lost, when the judge applied English law and left the songs with Sony/ATV.

Kappel was unmoved, asking whether the majors and their foreign affiliates would now honor termination by foreign writers. With Duran Duran and McCartney, he said, that has “not been their position in the past.”

5. Cox v. Sony hangs over what happens next

When Vetter files his response next month, his team will be joined by Joshua Rosenkranz, the Orrick litigator who in March beat the same majors at the Supreme Court.

Rosenkranz won the case for Cox Communications: on March 25, a unanimous court overturned the $1 billion verdict the major labels had won against the internet provider in 2019.

It means the lawyer who just beat the majors at the high court will now be working against them again, this time alongside Vetter.

Rosenkranz has a second tie to the case: he won Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons in 2013, the Supreme Court ruling the Fifth Circuit drew on to hand Vetter his worldwide rights.

The petition calls the panel’s use of his case a “tortured analogy,” which would leave Rosenkranz defending his own Supreme Court win.

After briefing, the justices will vote on whether to hear the case, a long shot regardless, since the Supreme Court takes only a sliver of the petitions put before it.

Justice Samuel Alito had granted the publishers two extensions to file, the most recent setting the June 12 deadline, according to the court’s docket.

The termination fight is one of several the majors are waging. Universal Music Group is contesting a bid by Salt-N-Pepa to reclaim their master recordings, a suit that was dismissed and is now on appeal.

The right has split results, too. 2 Live Crew won a jury verdict in 2024 to recapture five albums, but the Eleventh Circuit overturned it earlier this month.

A decision on whether the court will even take Vetter v. Resnik is expected in the coming months.