Photo Credit: David Burke
Universal Music Group (UMG) has fired back against Salt-N-Pepa’s appeal in a high-stakes rights-reversion case involving “Push It” and a number of other well-known works.
DMN’s been covering that courtroom confrontation since May 2025, when Salt-N-Pepa sued the major label for allegedly failing to honor a legitimate 2022 termination notice. Therein, Salt and Pepa sought to assume ownership of the recordings behind albums including but not limited to Hot, Cool & Vicious (1986) and A Salt with a Deadly Pepa (1988).
As many know, Section 203 of the Copyright Act is said to allow certain entertainment (not solely music) professionals to terminate copyright transfers to third parties like labels and publishers.
The corresponding process involves more than a few moving parts, but the short version is that Section 203 reportedly enables the recapture of post-1978 non-work-for-hire efforts after 35 years. Unsurprisingly, all manner of artists and songwriters have moved to secure ownership of decades-old creations, and termination-notice recipients have been far from eager to turn over IP.
But what happens if there isn’t an initial copyright grant to terminate? UMG claims that’s the case here; Salt-N-Pepa released the relevant albums under a 1986 deal with Next Plateau Records and an adjacent contract with Noise in the Attic Productions (which was owned by Salt’s then-boyfriend).
After the group’s commercial rise, Next Plateau in 1992 assigned its purported rights to London Records; closer to 2000, UMG obtained London and, in turn, said rights. 40 years later, then, many millions of dollars – not to mention a decidedly important grant-termination legal precedent – are riding on the interpretation of the 1986 agreements.
As we reported last month, Richard S. Busch-repped Salt-N-Pepa aggressively pushed back against the district court’s “manifestly erroneous” dismissal. In the plaintiffs’ view, “the relevant 1986 Agreements do effect a transfer of copyright by Salt-N-Pepa, or, at the very least, constitute their grant of an exclusive license to exploit the sound recordings to UMG’s predecessor-in-interest.”
And that, Salt-N-Pepa claimed in its late-March appeal, “is all that is necessary to fall within the purview of Section 203’s termination provisions.”
Meanwhile, UMG is of the exact opposite position and, per its newly filed retort, believes that the appropriate contracts “contained no grant of copyright rights executed by Plaintiffs, a fundamental requirement of the Copyright Act’s termination provisions.”
“The relevant agreements here are devoid of any language manifesting an intention to make a present transfer of copyright rights, and instead consistently indicate that Next Plateau, UMG’s predecessor, was to own the Sound Recordings in its own name from ‘inception’ as the ‘author’ thereof,” according to the document.
This quote just about sums up the central focus of UMG’s brief, which, while free of groundbreaking claims, also explores the closely related work-for-hire issue, looks to interpret the contracts under New York law, and dives into a recapture disagreement concerning alleged remixes (a sub-topic best left for future coverage).
With that, it’ll be worth continuing to track the legal battle, which raises an interesting question: If the appeals court rejects Salt-N-Pepa’s arguments, will labels and others be left with a surefire way to stop contracted talent from pursuing recaptures down the line?
Time will tell, and to state the obvious, this isn’t a cut-and-dry question with an easy answer. Additionally, it isn’t as if professionals will put pen to paper without a second thought. But Salt-N-Pepa’s interconnected 1986 agreements don’t seem to contain any particularly attention-grabbing (at least from the recapture perspective) provisions.
Rather, with the term “made for hire” conspicuously absent from both agreements, one of the contracts only deems the relevant company “the sole and exclusive owner of any and all rights, title and/or interest in and to master recordings recorded hereunder, including but not limited to the worldwide sound copyrights therein and the renewal rights thereto.”
