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Cher wins royalties lawsuit against Sonny Bono’s widow

Mary Bono had argued that she no longer needed to pay royalties to Cher after invoking a feature of US copyright law, but a judge has ruled otherwise

Cher has prevailed in a long-running lawsuit that she filed against the widow of her former musical partner and husband, Sonny Bono. Cher had received royalties from her chart-topping song catalogue with Bono since an agreement in their 1978 divorce settlement, that stated publishing revenue would be split evenly between the pair. In 2016, widow Mary Bono – a politician who succeeded Sonny in the US House of Representatives following his death – exercised a feature of copyright law that allows songwriters and their heirs to win back rights they have signed away, arguing that she now owned Sonny’s publishing rights.

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