The Supreme Court courtroom. Photo Credit: Phil Roeder
One marathon legal battle later, the Supreme Court has decided against reviewing the landmark precedent at the center of BMG v. Vetter, and organizations including the Songwriters Guild of America are touting the development as a major victory for songwriters.
Said development hit the appropriate docket today, when the nation’s highest court indicated that it lacks a quorum and, in doing so, upheld the appellate court’s prior ruling. Per the brief entry, Justices Sotomayor, Gorsuch, Barrett, and Jackson “took no part in the consideration or decision of this petition.”
And that’s presumably because they’ve all released books via Penguin Random House, a subsidiary of German conglomerate Bertelsmann. The Berlin-based media giant also owns BMG, which joined Universal Music, Sony Music, and Warner Music divisions in appealing to the Supreme Court.
In any event, the four recusals set the five remaining justices short of the six-justice quorum requirement – hence the order’s affirming songwriter Cyril Vetter’s appeals court victory “‘with the same effect as upon affirmance by an equally divided court.’”
We exclusively broke down that win closer to 2026’s beginning, after the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Vetter and, in the process, determined that U.S. copyright termination rights apply worldwide.
As many know, the important decision materialized in a years-running showdown involving Resnik Music Group and Vetter, who’d moved to terminate the grant of his copyright in “Double Shot (Of My Baby’s Love)” under Section 304 of the Copyright Act.
(To summarize a decidedly complex topic, the Copyright Act enables professionals to terminate copyright transfers finalized under non-work-for-hire agreements at least 35 years ago but in or after 1978.)
Without retreading too much ground here, it didn’t come as a surprise when Resnik pushed back against the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame inductee’s attempt to secure full ownership of his IP.
And in part, the publisher did so by claiming that the recapture applied only in the U.S., with Resnik retaining “the copyright to ‘Double Shot’ outside of the United States for the life of copyright.”
The stage was evidently set for a high-stakes dispute – and one with clear-cut implications for the wider industry.
Vetter went on to obtain a district court win (the presiding judge deemed him the “sole owner of all right, title, and interest throughout the world” in “Double Shot”) before fending off Resnik’s aforementioned Fifth Circuit appeal.
Another testament to the case’s importance: BMG and the majors then swapped out Resnik by buying its “claim to 25% ownership of the copyright at issue” – and specifically “for purposes of filing a petition for a writ of certiorari” at that.
But now, the aggressive effort to reverse the precedent has come up short for the petitioners, which previously criticized the appellate decision as a departure “from bedrock copyright law” and from “five decades of precedent.”
“Putting off resolution of this issue would serve no one; it would just escalate what is already an extremely difficult situation into a Gordian knot, all in the name of waiting for percolation that may never come,” their cert petition warned.
One side’s setback is, of course, the opposite side’s gain; Rick Carnes, the Songwriters Guild of America’s president, today described his organization as “thrilled and gratified” – while also pledging to fend off “[a]ny attempts to overturn this precedent.”
Here’s Carnes’ full statement on the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear the case:
“The Songwriters Guild of America (SGA) and the Member organizations of Music Creators North America (MCNA) are thrilled and gratified by today’s decision by the US Supreme Court not to review the federal circuit court decision in the Vetter case, globalizing the US termination rights of US copyright creators and their heirs.
For a half-century, SGA has been fighting for this result since leading the successful struggle to include termination rights in the US Copyright Act of 1976, and the fruits of those labors are now coming to international fruition. We heartily congratulate attorney Tim Kappel, who spearheaded this litigation on behalf of the ‘Double Shot’ songwriters, and thank all of those other legal consultants –including SGA’s outside counsel Charlie Sanders and Word Collections’ counsel Eric Goldberg– for their hard work over the years on this issue.
We are all proud to have participated in ensuring this victory for America’s music creators, and for songwriters, composers and lyricists throughout the world. Any attempts to overturn this precedent will be met with similar vigor.”
