By Dylan Smith, Digital Music News | Do U.S. copyright terminations extend to international markets? The Society of Composers & Lyricists and the Songwriters Guild of America believe so, and they’re weighing in on a high-stakes case revolving around the important question.
The mentioned organizations (and a few others operating outside the music space) explained their position in an amicus brief supporting “Double Shot (Of My Baby’s Love)” songwriter Cyril Vetter.
Back in February, Vetter scored a massive legal win when a federal court ruled that he could reclaim the rights to the noted 1963 work in all territories. As many know, Section 203 of the Copyright Act is said to enable rights-transfer terminations on non-work-for-hire creations 35 years after the fact.
Consequently, a number of legacy acts – most recently Salt-n-Pepa – have moved to capitalize with related notices and assume ownership of their IP. Especially in an industry where the hits of yesteryear remain commercially prominent, labels and publishers aren’t wild about copyright terminations, to put it mildly.
And the February ruling kicked things up a notch by determining that stateside copyright terminations extend not just to the U.S., of course, but to rights assigned globally. Unsurprisingly, the company (Resnik Music Group) on the opposite side of the far-reaching ruling promptly appealed.
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Read more about a law that could affect YOU here:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/news/songwriters-guild-of-america-and-society-of-composers-lyricists-file-brief-in-high-stakes-copyright-termination-case/
This story originally appeared on Digital Music News.
https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2025/06/24/songwriters-guild-of-america-copyright-termination-brief/