Copyright Termination Provisions Apply Worldwide
When Congress revamped the Copyright Act in 1976, it permitted authors of copyrighted works created before January 1, 1978 to terminate licenses or assignments of their works. 17 U.S.C. 304(c). The author has a five-year window to do so, which begins 56 years after the original copyright was secured. The termination can be by the author, or if not alive, his or her statutory heirs. A recent decision held that such termination covers rights worldwide. Vetter v. Resnik, 163 F.4th 951 (5th Cir. 2026)
In 1962, Cyril Vetter wrote the song Double Shot with Donald Smith. In 1963, they assigned their rights to a music publisher. Smith died in an airplane crash in 1972; Smith’s heirs succeeded to the renewal rights. (At the time, copyrights had to be renewed after 28 years.) In 2019, Vetter sent a termination letter to the publisher, invoking his termination rights under the Copyright Act. In 2022, ABC approached the parties to license the song for use in a television show, to be broadcast worldwide.
Vetter brought suit against the publisher, for a declaration that the termination applied to his rights throughout the world. The Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court’s grant of this relief. The statute states that “[t]ermination of a grant under this subsection affects only those rights covered by the grant that arise under this title, and in no way affects rights arising under any other Federal, State, or foreign laws.” The Fifth Circuit interpreted that “arise under” language to mean any copyright granted under U.S. law.
Since Vetter and Smith wrote Double Shot in the United States and were granted a copyright under U.S. law, the termination applied to the copyright in that song, even if the rights were used in other countries. The exclusion of foreign rights would apply to rights granted under foreign law, e.g., a song written outside the U.S. It also noted that international copyright treaties, the Berne Convention and Universal Copyright Convention subscribe to the principle of national treatment. That means that rights ownership is determined by the rights of the authors’ nation.
It is now commonplace that copyrighted works are exploited worldwide. The Vetter decision means that even foreign exploitation of works that originated in the U.S. may be subject to termination.
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