Last week, units of Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and BMG took the highly unusual step of purchasing a copyright for the express purpose of filing a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari. The copyright in question is the musical composition “Double Shot (Of My Baby’s Love)”, the subject of the Fifth Circuit’s shocking opinion in Vetter v. Resnik, 163 F.4th 951 (5th Cir. 2026). 

The Vetter ruling upends decades of established precedent with respect to the application of the statutory termination provisions of the United States Copyright Act (Sections 203 and 304(c)). Whereas these provisions have long been understood to allow authors to terminate U.S.-governed copyright grants only in the United States, Vetter, if it is upheld by the Supreme Court, would allow authors to terminate such grants worldwide.

The fact that the four largest music publishers are taking this fight out of Resnik’s hands illustrates the economic stakes of the Vetter ruling. The music industry is increasingly a global business; streaming revenues have exploded in emerging markets, social media has driven international music discovery, and major players in the catalog M&A space have undertaken strategic acquisitions in recent years to establish footholds in countries such as South Africa, Brazil and India. In such an environment, the ability of authors to recapture their copyrights on a worldwide basis would represent a dramatic shift in the balance of power between authors and rightsholders. Among the key benefits these authors would gain are the following:

• Authors who recapture their copyrights would be able to re-sell these copyrights as a geographically undivided asset, enabling buyers to exploit the copyrights without the need to share administration rights with persisting non-U.S. rightsholders. This right would exponentially increase the value of these authors’ catalogs, as buyers would be eager to hold rights worldwide as a so-called “one stop shop.”
• The negotiations that often occur between an author and the rightsholder during the period after the author serves notice of termination but before the copyrights actually revert will tilt significantly in the author’s favor, as the existing rightsholder would lose the leverage that comes with the implicit security of retaining the non-U.S. portion of the copyrights.

Moreover, Vetter leaves in question how authors who have previously recaptured their U.S. copyrights would be addressed. These authors would likely seek to confirm ownership of their non-U.S. copyrights and collection of non-U.S. income, not only on a prospective basis but also retroactive to the original date of reversion. How far back this retroactive collection can reach would undoubtedly be one of the next frontiers of litigation in the world of statutory termination law.

While these developments would be good news for authors in some respects, they would likely not be without drawbacks as part of a market reset accounting for the new reality established by Vetter. For example, valuation analysts would be required to factor worldwide reversion (and subsequent loss of worldwide income) into their financial models, potentially resulting in lower purchase prices for aspiring sellers of copyrights. 

Further, although not addressed directly by the Fifth Circuit, one inevitable corollary of the Vetter holding is that authors who have granted copyrights under non-U.S. law would no longer be able to avail themselves of termination rights under Sections 203 or 304(c), as non-U.S. copyright grants do not “arise under” the United States Copyright Act in the view of the Vetter court. This would represent a massive windfall for rightsholders who previously risked authors recapturing copyright and administration rights in the United States. It could also lead to an increase in the value of non-U.S. catalogs, driven by the newfound certainty that buyers of such catalogs would be stepping into perpetual worldwide interests that cannot be recaptured by the authors who made the underlying copyright grants. Additionally, astute parties acquiring copyrights are likely to seek creative ways for such acquisitions to be governed by non-U.S. law to avoid any future loss of copyright ownership.

Of course, it remains eminently possible that the Supreme Court will overturn Vetter on appeal. There is ample conflicting precedent in both the Second and Ninth Circuits—both of which have significantly more robust copyright jurisprudence than the Fifth Circuit—and the leading copyright law treatises reach the opposite conclusion of the Vetter court on the territorial scope of copyright recapture. But regardless of the outcome of the major publishers’ quest to return to the status quo, the Vetter case has brought important attention to the global nature of copyright and serves as a reminder that an understanding of the relevant governing laws is a crucial component of legal and financial due diligence, whether one is preparing to buy a catalog or representing an author entering into their first publishing deal.

Stay tuned for a look at the implications of Cox Communications vs. Sony Music Entertainment next week.

Cynthia Katz and Heidy Vaquerano are partners and Zach Blumenfeld is an associate in Fox Rothschild’s Entertainment and Sports Law Department. You can reach them at ckatz@foxrothschild.com, hvaquerano@foxrothschild.com, and zblumenfeld@foxrothschild.com, respectively.