An ongoing termination rights dispute between Lil Joe Records and the 2 Live Crew got a hearing in the American courts last week. A key part of the dispute centres on whether or not bankruptcy proceedings that took place in the mid-1990s impact the rights of each 2 Live Crew member to reclaim copyrights in their old recordings. Both parties agreed that’s a question that hasn’t been answered in court before.
The music under dispute here was originally released by Luke Records, the label run by 2 Live Crew member Luther Campbell. Those recordings were then acquired by Lil Joe Records – along with other copyrights and trademarks controlled by the group – in 1996 when both Campbell and Luke Records went bankrupt. Lil Joe Records is owned by Joe Weinberger, a lawyer who worked for Campbell prior to the collapse of his label.
But is any of that relevant to the termination rights claim made by Campbell and his former bandmates Mark Ross and Christopher Wong Won (or, in the case of the latter, who died in 2017, his estate)?
Under US copyright law, creators who assign – or transfer – their copyrights to a third party have a one-time opportunity to terminate that assignment and reclaim their rights after 35 years.
The current termination right was added to copyright law in the late 1970s, meaning it only really came into effect in the early 2010s, as we got to the point where 35 years had passed since the first assignment deals done after the law was changed.
Read more at https://completemusicupdate.com/article/2-live-crews-termination-rights-dispute-discussed-in-court/
