Photo Credit: Tomasz Zielonka
BMG and the majors have officially petitioned the Supreme Court to reverse the landmark Vetter v. Resnik termination decision, arguing that the appellate court’s “startling conclusion departs from bedrock copyright law” and “unsettles long-settled judicial, academic, industry, and international norms.”
Those parties just recently moved to bring the high-stakes case before the nation’s highest court. And as many will recognize from our in-depth coverage, the cert petition didn’t arrive out of left field.
Rather, this past March saw the majors and BMG scoop up Resnik Music Group’s interest in the relevant work, “Double Shot (Of My Baby’s Love),” so that they could spearhead an appeal. And their telling decision to tag out Resnik materialized after the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals kicked off 2026 by ruling in favor of Louisiana-born songwriter Cyril Vetter.
As Vetter filed his complaint against Resnik in 2023 – and as the Supreme Court may hear the case – it probably won’t come as a surprise that the legal battle involves several moving parts. This includes but isn’t limited to a six-decade-old contract and multiple subsequent rights purchases.
Underlying complexity aside, the top-level question is straightforward enough: When one terminates a copyright transfer in the States, does said termination apply internationally?
The “Double Shot” co-writer Vetter believes so – hence his decision to sue Resnik after the company took the opposite view and claimed post-termination global control over the song.
While the appeals court and others feel the same way, the majors and BMG, repped here by Clement & Murphy, have made it abundantly clear that they do not.
Furthermore, the IP-minded petitioners believe that the appellate court determination “immediately calls into question the scope and meaning of countless negotiated agreements backed by billions of dollars in consideration and undermines international agreements and comity.”
That idea – the supposed disruption of global IP norms – is prevalent throughout the petition, which describes the “outlier decision” as a “stark departure from settled understanding” and as upending “five decades of precedent.”
For example, this includes purported uncertainty on the part of film and TV studios in need of international music licenses – “With whom should they now be negotiating when it comes to acquiring a foreign license—the U.S. author who purportedly terminated a grant of worldwide rights, or the original publisher?”
Similarly, the filing explores the perceived possibility that some publishers, namely those that were assigned recaptured rights, could have effectively received “a windfall by obtaining not only U.S. rights, but worldwide rights” under the Fifth Circuit decision.
Then there’s the position that the purported uncertainty “harms U.S. authors and publishers both by forcing them to guess about what the default rule will turn out to be,” thereby chilling investments “in authors and works alike.”
A few closing notes: First, this is, of course, a summary of the lengthy petition, which also explores adjacent angles that aren’t necessarily conducive to concise and engaging coverage.
Second, the above-described doom-and-gloom possibilities all tie back to the petitioners’ central position, rooted in their view of “the statutory text,” that termination rights apply solely to U.S. copyrights.
Moreover, they maintain that Vetter initially transferred the plural “copyrights,” referring to a number of distinct global copyrights as opposed to one U.S.-centered “international copyright.”
Third, BMG and the majors are adamant that the Supreme Court would risk escalating “what is already an extremely difficult situation” by opting against hearing the case.
“This indeterminacy is crippling, and it reinforces why the entire creative ecosystem—including authors, whose ability to profit from their creativity ultimately hinges on their ability to convey the fruits of their labor—needs an answer now,” the text reads.
“Putting off resolution of this issue would serve no one; it would just escalate what is already an extremely difficult situation into a Gordian knot, all in the name of waiting for percolation that may never come,” the petition concludes.
