Termination Rights: The Vetter Decision

General Background

In 1962, Louisiana songwriters Cyril Vetter and Donald Smith wrote "Double Shot (Of My Baby's Love)," and the next year the duo signed away the worldwide copyright publisher, Windsong Music. In the years that followed, Smith passed away and Vetter secured all of the Smith Estate’s interest under the Windsong Music grant.

In 2019, Vetter formally sent notice of termination to Resnik Music Group (as successor in interest to Windsong Music, because they acquired Windsong) which under section 304(c) terminated the rights granted under the 1963 grant. The notice maintained effective dates of termination commencing in 2022. Following the effective dates a dispute arose over exactly what he got back: just U.S. rights, or the full worldwide rights he originally handed over.

District Court & Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Holdings

Both the federal district court and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Vetter, ruling that termination restored all the rights he had originally granted, without any geographic limitation. Both courts relied heavily on the statutory text. The Fifth Circuit understood that the Copyright Act defines a "transfer" of copyright broadly, to include a conveyance "whether or not it is limited in... place of effect." Since the original grant to Windsong was worldwide, and the statute treats the scope of what's transferred and what's later terminated as mirror images of each other, the courts held that terminating a worldwide grant restores worldwide rights.

Post Fifth Circuit Ruling

After the Fifth Circuit's ruling, Resnik sold its interest in the litigation to a group of the four largest music companies in the world. Remarkably, the labels did this purely to gain standing to petition the case to the Supreme Court.

Labels Argument for the Supreme Court Taking the Case

The petition framed the Fifth Circuit's decision as an outlier that threatens to upend the music industry. They argued that allowing authors to reclaim worldwide rights through termination, rather than the historic norm of U.S. rights only, would strip publishers of valuable foreign revenue streams built into decades of existing catalog deals, and that the ruling conflicts with a "long-settled" industry understanding that termination rights are territorially limited.

The labels also leaned heavily on international copyright principles, arguing that under the Berne Convention, an author's copyright is really a bundle of separate national copyrights that arise independently under each country's own laws. Which would mean a U.S. termination shouldn't be read to reach rights that, in their view, never arose under U.S. law in the first place. They claim that the Fifth Circuit's approach could create international friction and legal uncertainty for a global industry that depends on stable ownership rules.

Vetter’s Opposition Brief Against the Supreme Court Taking the Case

Vetter's brief in opposition urges the Court to deny taking the case and offers several compelling reasons. First, a central tenant of Supreme Court cases is that there is a circuit split (i.e., a documented conflict between multiple appeals courts circuits) and throughout their long brief, the labels never identify an actual circuit split. No other federal appeals court has ever ruled on this specific question, and thus the claim of a "long-settled" consensus that termination rights are U.S. only rests mostly on commentary rather than binding case law. Second, the brief argues this case is simply the wrong vehicle for the Court to resolve the issue. The labels never challenged Vetter's separate, independent ownership of another slice of the worldwide copyright, so even a total win at the Supreme Court would leave the labels as mere co-owners unable to control international licensing without Vetter's consent.

Third, the brief challenges the claim of industry-wide urgency, noting that the music industry has already been voluntarily shifting toward shorter licensing deals that return full worldwide rights to artists after 10 to 25 years. The market has already begun to adapt independently of what any court decides here. Finally, Vetter argues that the Berne Convention theory doesn't hold up. The Berne Convention governs how copyrights are protected and enforced within a given country and does not speak to who owns them.

Labels Reply

Under the rules of the Supreme Court, a petitioner may file a short reply addressing points raised in the brief in opposition, so the ultimately the party seeking the Supreme Court review gets the last word. On September 30, 2026, the labels submitted their reply. The reply is routine and signals nothing about the Court’s inclination to take the case, but it completes the paper record the justices will have in front of them. The primary addition is the introduction of a theory suggesting that the Court should consult the Solicitor General on the matter. Otherwise, the document primarily reinforces the core themes of the original petition by arguing that the Fifth Circuit’s decision contradicts decades of established law, industry practices, and legal scholarship.

MAC’s Position

The Supreme Court should not take this case. The absence of any actual circuit conflict is, on its own, a strong enough reason for the Court to let the issue percolate further before stepping in. A statutory question like this is extremely fact-specific and only one other court has ever meaningfully addressed it. The case is a poor vehicle, and on the substance, the termination right exists precisely to prevent publishers from permanently profiting off works that authors signed away decades ago for next to nothing. A reading of the statute by the Supreme Court to strip away foreign rights (which sometimes are the more valuable half of a catalog) would hollow out the protection Congress intended to give authors. For all these reasons, the Court should deny certiorari and let the Fifth Circuit's decision stand.