BMG Rights Management (US) LLC, et al. v. Cyril E. Vetter, et al.

Every creative success (music, movies, TV, books, and more) depends on two groups working together: the authors who create the work, and the publishers who make significant investments in marketing, promoting, and distributing it. For this collaboration to work, authors and publishers must enter durable agreements early in a work’s lifecycle, often before anyone (including the author) knows a work’s longterm value. If a work outperforms expectations— often due to publishers’ efforts and investment— authors sometimes want to renegotiate these deals. Countries have balanced authors’ and publishers’ interests in different ways. U.S. law previously used a two-term structure, with the initial copyright lasting 28 years, but authors (or their heirs) starting fresh with another 28-year renewal term. Congress later added a termination right: After an enumerated interval, and under certain circumstances, an author gets a five-year window to reclaim certain rights. Recognizing other countries have struck different balances, however, Congress caveated that “[t]ermination … affects only those rights covered by the grant that arise under this title, and in no way affects rights arising under any other Federal, State, or foreign laws.” 17 U.S.C. §304(c)(6)(E). Given that express instruction and the territorial nature of copyrights, until the decision below it was settled, literal hornbook law that statutory reversion provided by U.S. law extended only to U.S. copyrights. The question presented is: When copyright rights revert to authors or their heirs by operation of U.S. law, is the reversion limited