Publishers are doing just fine

Songwriter Cyril Vetter filed his first brief to the justices on Sept. 14, telling them the majors' panic is theater. His lawyers say publishers will thrive with a little less leverage.

“But publishers are doing just fine and will continue to thrive even if some of them have slightly less bargaining power”

The ruling they want erased

A January decision was the first ever to say termination returns a songwriter's overseas rights, not just the American ones. The majors call it profoundly wrong and predict chaos.

“profoundly wrong”

What termination actually does

The law lets creators claw back rights decades after signing them away. Until January, it stopped at the U.S. border, so publishers kept foreign income forever.

A 1963 rock song started it

Vetter sued to recover Double Shot (Of My Baby's Love) from a small publisher. A federal appeals court agreed he should get all of it back, foreign markets included.

The majors bought the case

Universal, Warner, Sony and BMG purchased the small publisher outright, openly to carry the fight to the Supreme Court. Their June brief said 50 years of practice and billions in deals were at stake.

“unsettled 50 years of industry practice”

No circuit split, no hurry

Vetter's side argues the court should not take the case at all. No other appeals court has ruled, and the majors barely mentioned a split until their petition's second-to-last page.

“That alone is reason enough to follow this court's usual approach of letting the issue percolate.”

Congress wrote no borders

If the justices do hear it, Vetter's lawyers say the statute's text sets no geographic limit. Handing an author back only half their rights was never the plan.

We have heard this tune

His attorneys point to the 2013 resold books case and the VCR fight, which studios once called the Boston strangler of film. The industries lost, adapted, and kept making money.

“The industries lost those cases. They adapted. And they are doing fine.”