Speaker 1: Paul McCartney has been trying to regain the publishing rights
Speaker 1: to two d sixties seven of the Beatles classic song
Speaker 1: since the nineteen eighties. That's when Michael Jackson outbid him
Speaker 1: for the rights. Last year, Jackson's estate sold the Beatles
Speaker 1: back catalog to Sony. McCartney has now filed suit in
Speaker 1: Manhattan to get the songs back in what is known
Speaker 1: as copyright termination under the Copyright Act. This classic is
Speaker 1: the first Beatles song to become eligible for copyright termination
Speaker 1: Love You Know I Love You. Performers like Prince and
Speaker 1: Billy Joel have used this part of the Copyright Act
Speaker 1: to regain control of their work, but McCartney's case may
Speaker 1: prove to be more difficult. I've been talking with intellectual
Speaker 1: property litigator Terence Ross, a partner at Captain Uten Rosamund
Speaker 1: Terry explain how copyright termination works. It's one of the
Speaker 1: most complicated parts, alright, ex simply then, essentially, there was
Speaker 1: this notion when we redid the copyright laws in ninety six.
Speaker 1: Um this popular notion that big companies, recording companies, publishing houses,
Speaker 1: movie studios were taking advantage of the creators of works,
Speaker 1: and especially when they were young, and they were new
Speaker 1: UH in their fields, and that they were obtaining the
Speaker 1: rights to the copyrights to their works UM for relatively
Speaker 1: little money. UM. I don't know if there was ever
Speaker 1: any actual evidence to support that, but we put into
Speaker 1: the nine Copyright Act UM two provisions that allowed these
Speaker 1: um UH creators of works UM too at a future
Speaker 1: date terminate assignments of the copyrights that they had given
Speaker 1: away UM in an effort to re monetize UM the
Speaker 1: value of those works. And if they had passed away
Speaker 1: in the indim that right to terminate UM was passed
Speaker 1: along to their heirs, whether these spouse or children or grandchildren.
Speaker 1: So UM, and the mechanism is is different depending on
Speaker 1: whether the work at issue was um um pre seventy
Speaker 1: eight or post nine seventy eight. Here we're dealing with
Speaker 1: the Beatles. Songs are all pre nineteen seventy eight songs,
Speaker 1: and so they all come up. The termination right exists
Speaker 1: under section three oh four of the United States Copyright Act. Okay,
Speaker 1: So McCartney's lawyers started sending notices to Sony in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight stating he's desire to reclaim the copyright
Speaker 1: Sony declined to do so, why would Sony agree to
Speaker 1: that without a court fight, Because it is so complicated
Speaker 1: to comply with the regular regulations that I allow you
Speaker 1: to determinate um that it would be a mistake, in
Speaker 1: my view on Sony's part um to ever agree that
Speaker 1: they were done properly, because there is always the risk
Speaker 1: um that McCartney will have watched um the termination procedures
Speaker 1: and therefore Sony will get to keep the rights. And
Speaker 1: this is not speculative. In in two thousand and fifteen,
Speaker 1: we had a very important decision from the Second Circuit
Speaker 1: there in New York involving the song Santa Claus Is
Speaker 1: Coming to town. You know, the song Scianta Claus Is
Speaker 1: Coming to Airs. The heirs of that song had attempted
Speaker 1: to terminate the copyright and they were in litigation with E. M.
Speaker 1: I for the better part of six years on whether
Speaker 1: or not uh the heirs had followed the regulatory procedure
Speaker 1: for termination correctly. The district court, the trial court originally
Speaker 1: said no, you didn't, so there's no termination. They had
Speaker 1: to go up to the Second Circuit and in a
Speaker 1: very controversial decision um, the Second Circuit figured out a
Speaker 1: way to UM to say that to rule that the
Speaker 1: heirs had properly terminated UM. And if ever there was
Speaker 1: a situation where UM that or a young songwriter had
Speaker 1: been taken advantage of by a big recording company, that
Speaker 1: was it. And yet the courts had really strain to
Speaker 1: allow termination or why would Sony here? I just agree
Speaker 1: that they did it the right way. About a minute,
Speaker 1: Terry Duran. Duran recently lost a similar case. Could McCartney's
Speaker 1: having been in the UK at the time, these were
Speaker 1: made complicate things? I don't think so, because we're only
Speaker 1: talking about U S copyrights here. The UK law copyright law,
Speaker 1: it does allow for termination. It is different, um, significantly
Speaker 1: different than the US law and termination. And so I
Speaker 1: think Paul McCartney's lawyers have been very smart in what
Speaker 1: they've done here and gone after termination of the U
Speaker 1: S copyrights. UM. He's got very good counsel. I assume
Speaker 1: that they're going to follow the formality's exactly right, UH,
Speaker 1: and ultimately the courts will rule in his favor. But
Speaker 1: I don't blame Sony for putting up a fight. They
Speaker 1: they just bought them recently. Well, we will see what
Speaker 1: happens and We'll have you on as this case goes
Speaker 1: on and on and on, which I expect that it
Speaker 1: will always a pleasure to have you on. That's Terence Ross,
Speaker 1: a partner at katon Uten Rosenman, coming up on Bloomberg Law,
Speaker 1: a new ruling in the ongoing legal fight over construction
Speaker 1: of the controversial Dakota Access pipeline. I'm June Grosso. This
Speaker 1: is Bloomberg. Love me Do