Mills Music, Inc. v. Snyder et al. (469 U.S. 153)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided January 8, 1985 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 469 U.S. 153 · 105 S. Ct. 638
- Decided
- January 8, 1985
- Term
- October Term 1984
- Vote
- 5–4
- Majority author
- Justice Stevens
- Issue area
- Economic Activity
- Disposition
- Reversed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice Stevens delivered the opinion of the Court. This is a controversy between a publisher, Mills Music, Inc. (Mills), and the heirs of an author, Ted Snyder (Snyder), over the division of royalty income that the sound recordings of the copyrighted song “Who’s Sorry Now” (the Song) have generated. The controversy is a direct outgrowth of the general revision of copyright law that Congress enacted in 1976. The 1976 Act gave Snyder’s heirs a statutory right to reacquire the copyright that Snyder had previously granted to Mills; however, it also provided that a “derivative work prepared under authority of the grant before its termination may continue to be utilized under the terms of the grant after its termination.” The sound recordings of the Song, which have generated the royalty income in dispute, are derivative works of that kind. Thus, the dispute raises the question whether an author’s termination of a publisher’s interest in a copyright also terminates the publisher’s contractual right to share in the royalties on such derivative works. The key that will unlock this statutory puzzle is an understanding of the phrase “under the terms of the grant” as it is used in § 304(c)(6)(A) — the so-called “derivative works exception” (the Exception) to the “termination of transfer and licenses” provisions found in § 304(c). Before focusing on the meaning of the key phrase, we…
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