But it’s too close to ignore.
A week ago, the Fifth Circuit quietly dropped a big ruling in a case I’d never heard of, Vetter v. Resnik, and if you write songs for a living, it matters. And if you’re a copyright wonk, it certainly matters.
I think I’ve got this straight. In the early 1960s, songwriter and later Loyola professor Cyril Vetter assigned the rights in his song “Double Shot (Of My Baby’s Love)” to Windsong Music Publishers, whose catalog would ultimately land at Resnik Music Group under a “worldwide rights” deal, evidently typical in that era. Decades later, Vetter did what Congress intended authors to do — he served a termination notice under U.S. law and went to court to get a declaration that he now owned his song again, not just in the United States.
That’s the thing.
The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana agreed and declared Vetter (and his company) the sole owner of the copyright in “Double Shot” throughout the world. On January 12, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed that ruling in full, giving Vetter a new, unencumbered worldwide copyright.
Bill Donahue’s pieces for Billboard explain better than I probably will: This ruling means termination can unwind decades-old “worldwide” assignments, not just domestic ones. Is it a big deal?
Music Business Worldwide quoted the Music Artists Coalition (MAC), celebrating the ruling as “a massive win for the principle of fairness” and a “seismic shift” for songwriters and artists operating in a streaming‑driven global market. MAC’s executive director Ron Gubitz, “The termination right is an artist’s second chance at ownership. If the original deal gave away the world, that second chance must include the world.” The old territorial framing doesn’t fit anymore for obvious reasons — one more MAC quote here: “In today’s streaming economy, music distribution is almost immediately global,” and “limiting termination to the U.S. would exclude creators from a massive (and growing) portion of their global earning potential.”
Music Business Worldwide also highlighted a key passage from Judge Carl Stewart’s opinion, rejecting the publisher’s narrow reading of the statute as “unpersuasive” and pointing out that such an interpretation “would deprive Vetter of the full set of rights he originally conveyed,” which is “counter to the purpose of the statute.”
If you are a publisher or label sitting on a big pile of “world ex‑U.S.” rights in older works, you might not be thrilled. It’s a big broad ruling. Industry‑side briefs in the case warned that reading termination to reach foreign rights would upend “a half‑century of settled industry norms” and inject “chaos” into catalog valuations and existing agreements. I’m leaning a lot on Bill here in trying to make this interesting. So, go read his writing on it.
I’m sympathetic. The world is changing quickly enough, and obviously the business model on a lot of catalog deals assumed that even if an author terminates in the U.S., the foreign rights would remain intact. That gave publishers control. It may have evaporated with this affirmation.
This is a big decision, but probably one in a process. (I’m not a lawyer, or a law professor, but) This is the fifth circuit, not SCOTUS. Other circuits could theoretically disagree, as might foreign courts. The notion that a U.S. statute can rearrange rights to works in their territories, I would think, will rustle feathers. It probably emphasizes getting termination rights buttoned up. And it reflects modern reality, at least a little, away from the territorial stuff, as technology wipes out boundaries every day.
It makes some sense to establish universal rules. This is a step, heavy-handed maybe, but that’s modern too, ain’t it?
So, if recapture is the proverbial “second bite at the apple,” after you perhaps regret all you gave up in your original deal, the Fifth Circuit just said that the second chance should look a lot less like a bite at only half of the apple.
