The major music companies have hired the country’s top U.S. Supreme Court lawyer for a looming battle at the high court over copyright termination rules.
Following a first-of-its-kind court ruling that musicians can enforce U.S. termination rules across the globe, the majors are now pushing the Supreme Court to overturn it, arguing that it has “upended” longstanding music industry norms on how such reversions work.
Court records now show the labels will be represented in that battle by Paul Clement, a former U.S. Solicitor General and arguably the nation’s most accomplished Supreme Court litigator. He is one of just a handful of lawyers to argue more than 100 cases before the justices.
Clement will be tasked with persuading the court to tackle Vetter v. Resnik, in which a lower court ruled in January that artists can use termination to win back not only their American copyrights, but also their overseas rights to the same songs. The decision overturned decades of legal precedent and industry practice that such foreign rights would remain with a publisher even after a termination was executed.
The Vetter ruling was hailed by artists and advocacy groups as a “game-changer for music creators,” but it was a clear loss for labels and publishers that currently own those songs. So they executed an unorthodox legal maneuver to take the case to the Supreme Court.
Last month, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and BMG purchased the disputed copyright from Robert Reznik — the owner of the small music publisher that lost the landmark case to songwriter Cyril Vetter — and said they would take over the case so they could appeal it to SCOTUS.
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On April 3, now represented by Clement, the labels asked the justices for more time to file their appeal. In doing so, they made their first substantive arguments to the high court about the merits of their appeal.
“For decades, legions of private parties —both in the U.S. and abroad, across various creative industries — have ordered their affairs on the understanding that termination of the grant of U.S. rights … does not affect the ownership of rights granted for other territories,” Clement writes in the filing.
“Earlier this year, the [Vetter court] expressly split from those cases and upended those settled industry norms,” Clement adds, calling it an “alarming result” that had overturned an “uncontroversial” status quo.
Neither side immediately returned requests for comment.
Clement is a powerful ally before the high court, where advocacy has become increasingly dominated in recent years by a small group of elite litigators. He served as solicitor general under President George W. Bush before going into private practice, where he has become known for arguing conservative causes like gay marriage and gun control. But he’s also representing Federal Reserve member Lisa Cook in her current battle with President Donald Trump.
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Clement is no stranger to the music business. He just wrapped up representing the same companies in Cox v. Sony, which saw the Supreme Court overturn a $1 billion piracy verdict won by the labels against telecom giant Cox Communications.
In seeking to have the deadlines extended in the Vetter case, Clement cited his own busy docket — including pending petitions or arguments in four other separate SCOTUS cases. That motion was granted on Monday by Justice Samuel Alito, giving the labels until next month to file their petition.
