Cyril E. Vetter et al. v. Robert Resnik et al. was a case in the Fifth Circuit that examined ownership rights arising from the Copyright Act of 1909 and how they applied to the termination of foreign copyright rights. The work in question was “Double Shot (Of My Baby’s Love)” written by Vetter and Don Smith in 1962. Smith sold the rights in 1964 to Windsong Music Publishers for one dollar. (Yeah, the glory days of the music business.) Windsong’s catalog was sold to Resnick.
Section 304 (c) of the Copyright Act gives authors the right to terminate transfer of the copyright after 28 years, citing the uneven playing field that most artists experience during negotiations with publishers. After Smith died in 1994, the Vetter Company purchased Smith’s renewal rights in the song from Smith’s heirs and lay in wait for the chance in 2022 to terminate Smith’s agreement with the record company. Once that was accomplished, Vetter filed a lawsuit in the Middle District of Louisiana for a declaratory judgment, asserting that he was the rightful owner of all of the copyright rights for the song.
The district court agreed with Vetter and granted summary judgment against Resnik. Resnik then appealed to the Fifth Circuit.
Resnik’s defense rested on the theory that when Vetter terminated his rights, the foreign rights to the song were not affected. Resnick claimed that, upon publication, copyright interests were created in each country, and those rights arose from those countries’ laws. Vetter countered by saying this case concerned ownership rather than infringement, and ownership of the rights arose from Section 304 (c) of the Copyright Act. That included copyrights which “arise from” the U.S. Copyright Act, and which can be extended internationally.
The appeals court received amicus briefs from numerous parties including artist groups and legal authorities, most notably the Music Artists Coalition. Its brief said that denying the worldwide termination of rights would leave artists with only “half of the apple.”
The Fifth Circuit turned to the dictionary definition (always a sign that someone is in trouble) of the word “arise,” which meant “to originate from a source.” It then read the plain text in other sections of the Copyright Act with similar terms and found that there existed no geographical limitation. Furthermore, the appeals court noted the stated intent of the 1909 Act was to correct the imbalance of power that often occurred when artists are beginning their careers and have no bargaining power — a scenario that mirrored Vetter’s and Smith’s experience. (Remember that $1 transaction?)
Resnik’s defense also relied heavily on treatises, including the well respected Nimmer on Copyright. The court said other circuits may hold Nimmer as the ultimate authority on copyright, but Nimmer in this case had interpreted the copyright statute incorrectly.
As such, the Fifth Circuit affirmed the summary judgment for termination of the U.S. copyright, agreeing that the 28-year statutory termination also terminated any foreign rights that had been granted during the prior term.
Initially, I anticipated this decision could be an outrageous overreach of “extraterritoriality” of U.S. copyright law, but it makes sense to me now. The court was not telling other countries how to determine whether someone outside the U.S. had infringed U.S. copyrights, but rather who owned U.S. rights in a work where the rights originated here. So, this is not an imperialist result — it’s just a songwriter’s triumph, 28 years later.
