Get the latest gossip

Sony Music Settles Class Action Lawsuit Filed By Recording Artists Over Termination Rights

Sony Music settled a lawsuit filed by artists aiming to regain control of their masters, ending years of litigation over copyright termination rights.

Sony Music has reached a settlement to resolve a lawsuit filed by New York Dolls singer David Johansen and other artists in an effort to regain control of their masters, finally ending years of closely-watched class-action litigation against major record labels over copyright law’s termination right. The tentative agreement, announced in court papers last week, will resolve a case in which artists claimed Sony had unfairly rejected their efforts to invoke termination – a federal law that’s supposed to let authors take back control of their works decades after they sold them away. Taken together, the two lawsuits represented a sweeping critique of how the two music giants were allegedly approaching termination rights, which were created in the 1970s as a means of helping correct the imbalance of power between large entertainment companies and individual creators.

Get the Android app