This past summer, the major music companies in the United States asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a landmark appellate ruling concerning an author’s right to reclaim copyrights previously assigned to a music publisher or other rights exploiter. The decision, known as Vetter v. Resnik, has sent shockwaves through the music industry. 

The majors argue that the ruling is fundamentally incorrect and threatens to create significant disruption throughout the music business. Counsel for songwriter Cyril Vetter, on the other hand, contend that the industry’s predictions of chaos are greatly exaggerated. According to Vetter, the decision merely enhances songwriters’ ability to negotiate fairer compensation for the exploitation of their works. 

What Is at Stake? 

Under U.S. copyright law, authors who have assigned their copyrights to an exploiter for the duration of copyright protection may, after a statutory period, terminate that grant and reclaim their rights. In practice, however, authors invoking these termination rights traditionally recovered only their U.S. exploitation rights. 

The Vetter decision, issued earlier this year, changed that understanding. The court held that termination affected the copyright grant as a whole, meaning that the author regained not only U.S. rights but also the associated foreign exploitation rights. 

The major music companies did not see this coming. Their longstanding position was that even if U.S. rights reverted to the author, exploitation rights outside the United States would remain with the original grantee. Given the global nature of music streaming, this approach allowed publishers and record companies to continue generating international revenues indefinitely, maintain substantial influence over worldwide exploitation, and preserve significant leverage when renegotiating decades-old contracts with songwriters and recording artists. 

Recent Developments in the Litigation 

The dispute originated with “Double Shot (Of My Baby’s Love),” a classic American rock song written by Cyril Vetter and released in 1963. 

Decades ago, Vetter assigned the copyright in the composition to a relatively small music publisher. The U.S. Court of Appeals later held that by exercising his statutory termination rights, Vetter regained all rights previously transferred, including foreign rights. 

Following that ruling, the major music companies, including Universal Music Publishing, Warner Chappell, Sony Music Publishing, and BMG, joined forces and acquired the legal position of the smaller publisher. This enabled them to seek review by the U.S. Supreme Court. 

Their petition argued that allowing the appellate decision to stand would result in billions of dollars in losses and would upend a business model that has governed the music industry for more than fifty years. Because U.S. copyright law grants copyright protection not only to musical compositions but also to sound recordings, the outcome is of great importance to both music publishers and record labels. 

In September 2026, Cyril Vetter filed his response for the first time. He argued that the Supreme Court should decline review because the case does not satisfy the Court’s traditional requirement of a “circuit split”—conflicting decisions among federal appellate courts. Since Vetter appears to be the only appellate decision directly addressing this issue, no such conflict exists. 

Vetter further argued that, even if review is granted, nothing in the Copyright Act suggests that an author recovering rights through statutory termination should receive only part of the copyright interest previously transferred. Nor does the statute impose any geographical limitation on the rights that revert to the author. 

The Facts of the Case 

In 1963, Cyril Vetter and his late co-author Don Smith assigned their entire copyright interest in Double Shot to Windsong Music Publishers in exchange for one dollar. 

The agreement transferred: 

“the exclusive rights to Double Shot throughout the world for the full term of copyright protection, including a contingent assignment of all renewal period rights under the Copyright Act of 1909.” 

Years later, Windsong assigned fifty percent of its interest to Lyresong Music, Inc. Subsequently, Windsong itself was acquired by Resnik. 

In March 2019, Vetter exercised his statutory termination rights in accordance with the Copyright Act. Three years later, ABC sought a license from Vetter for the use of Double Shot in a television series. After Vetter submitted a licensing proposal, Resnik asserted that it still owned a portion of the copyright. 

In 2023, a federal district court declared Vetter the sole owner of the copyright. Resnik appealed and advanced three principal arguments: 

• Vetter’s termination notice had no effect on foreign rights under a textual reading of the Copyright Act; 

• The district court’s interpretation conflicted with prior case law concerning foreign rights; 

• The ruling was inconsistent with U.S. treaty obligations under the Berne Convention and the Universal Copyright Convention. 

The appellate court rejected these arguments. 

First, it found no support in the statutory text for limiting termination to domestic rights only. Second, it concluded from the legislative history that Congress intended termination rights to address the unequal bargaining positions often existing between authors and exploiters. The true value of a copyrighted work frequently becomes apparent only after exploitation has occurred and contracts have long been executed. 

The court also considered evidence presented by songwriter and artist organizations demonstrating that the reversion of worldwide rights has, in practice, long been common within the music industry. 

The court declined to follow the contrary views of several prominent copyright scholars, including Nimmer and Siegel, and accordingly rejected earlier decisions relying on those interpretations. 

Finally, the court was not persuaded that its decision conflicted with the Berne Convention or the Universal Copyright Convention. According to the court, the case concerned questions of ownership, transfer, and termination of copyright interests rather than copyright infringement. Infringement issues remain governed by the law of the country in which protection is sought, whereas ownership and termination issues may be governed by U.S. law. 

Renewal Rights 

Resnik also unsuccessfully argued that the so-called Renewal Rights under U.S. copyright law could apply only to exploitation within the United States. 

A detailed discussion of Renewal Rights falls outside the scope of this article. These rights originate in earlier U.S. copyright statutes, including the Copyright Act of 1909, when copyright protection was initially granted for a limited term, generally twenty-eight years. 

Dutch copyright law contains no equivalent concept. 

Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that Congress recognized as early as 1909 that Renewal Rights were intended to provide authors with a second opportunity to obtain fair compensation for their creative efforts and, where an author died before the renewal period commenced, to provide support for surviving family members. 

Under U.S. law, both exclusive and non-exclusive grants may be subject to termination. 

One of the most interesting aspects of the January 2026 decision is the court’s conclusion that copyright ownership should not be fragmented into separate rights depending on the laws of individual countries participating in international copyright treaties. Whether the decision implicitly recognizes a form of overarching international copyright interest remains unclear. The court did, however, make a clear distinction between infringement issues on the one hand and ownership and renewal issues on the other when determining the applicable law. 

How Does Dutch Law Address Similar Situations? 

Under Dutch law, as codified in both the Dutch Civil Code and the Dutch Copyright Act, agreements may terminate through expiration of their agreed term, rescission for defects of consent such as fraud, mistake, duress, or abuse of circumstances, or dissolution for breach of contract. 

In the latter case, the exploiting party must have committed an actual breach, such as failing to pay royalties owed to the author. 

In addition, Dutch law permits the termination of continuing contractual relationships. It is this mechanism that has increasingly enabled creators, including songwriters and neighboring rights holders, to recover rights that had previously been assigned to publishers or record companies for extensive periods. 

As an attorney, I have had the opportunity to contribute to this development, including through successful litigation involving the music publisher of the Dutch rock band Golden Earring. That case concerned musical composition copyrights. More recently, the District Court of Amsterdam permitted the termination of a recording agreement in litigation between a performing artist and the record company Armada Music. The court held that the artist was entitled to terminate the relationship, provided that a reasonable notice period was observed. In that particular case, a notice period of approximately seven months was considered reasonable. 

What constitutes a reasonable notice period depends on all relevant circumstances. 

To my knowledge, in none of the Dutch cases involving termination or dissolution have exploiters argued that successful authors or artists should recover only Dutch exploitation rights. Where contractual rights were originally granted on a worldwide basis, the reversion of those rights naturally has worldwide effect. 

Viewed from a Dutch perspective, it is somewhat remarkable that American courts reached a similar conclusion only in 2026. The major music companies, however, remain firmly opposed to that outcome. 

Conclusion 

Particularly where music agreements were concluded decades ago, rights were assigned for the full copyright term, and the exploiter’s investment was either minimal or has long since been recouped, the termination of long-term contractual relationships can provide artists and songwriters with an effective means of improving their economic position. 

Termination may create leverage to renegotiate more favorable financial terms with an existing publisher or record label. Alternatively, it may allow creators to seek a new business partner willing to offer higher compensation. 

Under Dutch law, the termination of such continuing contractual relationships affects the worldwide rights transfer as a whole and therefore has worldwide consequences. 

By Margriet Koedooder
De Vos & Partners Advocaten