Termination of Music Copyright Transfers: The Renegotiation Reality

• Author: Kenneth Abdo - Timothy Matson - Jacob Abdo
• Position: Kenneth Abdo is a partner in the Minneapolis office of Fox Rothschild LLP. With more than 30 years serving as legal counsel to artists, creators, and entertainment businesses, he has extensive experience working with developing, established, and legacy artists and their estates. Timothy Matson is a transactional, litigation, and intellectual...
• Pages: 27-31

Published in Landslide® magazine, Volume 11, Number 2, a publication of the ABA Section of Intellectual Property Law (ABA-IPL), ©2018 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved.

This information or any portion thereof may not be copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association.

November/December 2018 n LANDSLIDE 25

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The Renegotiation Reality

The Renegotiation Reality

By Kenneth Abdo, Timothy Matson, and Jacob Abdo

1978, the actual value of the yet unexploited or to-be-created

works were unknown, and the author had limited leverage in

negotiations. In later years, the true value of works became

clear. There are many stories of unknown—sometimes teen-

aged—artists who signed deals under terms that limited

record and publishing companies’  nancial risk while maxi-

mizing their reward for the duration of copyright (which now

extends 70 years from the life of the author). The termination

right mitigates this inequitable outcome by giving artists an

opportunity to renegotiate their earliest agreements.

This article begins with a review of the statutory provisions

governing the termination right. It then discusses limitations to

the termination right in the context of recent judicial decisions.

It concludes that as more works age into termination, the right

The termination right creates a method for

authors to recapture valuable copyrights

in both musical compositions (songwrit-

ing) and sound recordings (recordings of

performances of compositions).1 Congress

created the termination right to safeguard

authors against “unremunerative transfers . . . resulting in part

from the impossibility of determining a work’s value until it

has been exploited.”2 The termination right is absolute and

inalienable.3 It empowers recording artists and songwriters

to regain control of their works and either renegotiate agree-

ments on more equitable terms or enter into new agreements.

For example, when a promising young musician granted

copyright interests to a record or publishing company in

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