I Want My Copyright Back

Trying to reverse actions from decades ago when one's career was in a much different place can be cumbersome in the legal world of copyright. Just ask John Waite, Joe Ely, Syd Straw, and others who have filed suit against UMG Recordings, Inc. in the Southern District of New York and requested certification of their suit as a class action.

All such plaintiffs had recording contracts with companies who are predecessors in interest to UMG and assigned sound recording copyrights to the respective companies. Section 203 of the Copyright Act of 1976 sets forth conditions for termination of a transfer, license, or grant of copyright. Such termination may occur during a period of five years beginning at the end of thirty-five years from the date of execution of the transfer unless the transfer covers the right of publication of the work. In the latter case, the termination period begins at the end of thirty-five years from the date of publication of the work or the end of forty years from execution of the transfer, whichever term ends earlier.

All plaintiffs served notices of termination on UMG and filed the notices with the Copyright Office. UMG deemed all such notices invalid through its attorney, and the lawsuit resulted - copyright infringement and declaratory relief. 

Section 203 specifically excludes works made for hire from being subject to termination. The early movement in this case indicated the position of UMG that all of the compositions are indeed works made for hire - works made for hire by UMG. 

The Waite/Ely plaintiff group amended its complaint on June 5 of this year, and UMG has filed a motion to dismiss based on the amended complaint. UMG's motion is based on technical deficiencies in the termination notices and, more notably, the Copyright Act's three-year statute of limitation and the plaintiffs' lack of ownership of their copyrights. In addition, UMG claims that the initial recording contracts deem all sound recordings made pursuant to them as works made for hire. In my view, at least one of these deficiencies will result in dismissal of the complaint. And all of them could have been avoided with better legal advice and (I know - I have said it before) better attention to detail at crucial points in time 3.5 decades ago.

In at least some of the instances, the sound recordings were also works made for hire by the artists for their own loan-out companies. So whether such recordings were works made for hire for the loan out companies or works made for hire for the label, ownership of the music is at issue and was resolved more than three years prior. This triggers the statute of limitation and time bars the claims. And it also makes UMG's motion to dismiss awfully dangerous.

To maintain an action for infringement, a plaintiff must establish 

1) Ownership of copyright

2) Copying of original elements of the work

So if ownership of copyright is already decided way more than three years before the lawsuit was filed, the statute of limitation will find its way into the collective life of the plaintiffs. In this case, the only saving grace for the plaintiffs perhaps is an argument that the ownership dispute has just now occurred. But a glance at the cases on point indicate that this could be an uphill battle for some artists who should have paid more attention to their legal matters back in the day.