Short-Handed Supreme Court Leaves Songwriter's Worldwide Copyright Victory Intact
The U.S. Supreme Court could not decide the case of BMG Rights Management v. Vetter on October 19: four of the nine justices did not participate, leaving five, short of the six-justice quorum federal law requires, so the court affirmed the lower court's judgment under 28 U.S.C. § 2109 without setting a national precedent. The four non-participating justices were Sonia Sotomayor, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson; the court gave no reason, and several outlets noted that Penguin Random House, part of BMG parent company Bertelsmann, has published books by all four. The dispute traces to the 1962 rock song "Double Shot (Of My Baby's Love)," co-written by Cyril Vetter and Donald Smith, who assigned its worldwide rights to Windsong Music Publishers in 1963. Vetter invoked the Copyright Act's termination provision in 2019, effective May 2022. On January 12, 2026, the Fifth Circuit held that the termination right has no geographic limit and that Vetter had reclaimed the worldwide copyright. The ruling, which the music companies Universal Music Group, Sony Music, Warner Music Group and BMG lost, is binding on federal courts in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：华盛顿的美国最高法院大楼。图片来源：Wikimedia Commons，公共领域。Photo: The U.S. Supreme Court Building in Washington. Source: Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
