On Monday, October 19, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court ended the music publishers' bid to overturn one of the most important copyright rulings in decades, but without deciding the case. In BMG v. Vetter (No. 25-1391), four justices (Sotomayor, Gorsuch, Barrett and Jackson) "took no part in the consideration or decision" of the petition. That left five justices, one short of the six needed for a quorum. Under federal law, the Court therefore affirmed the Fifth Circuit's judgment "with the same effect as upon affirmance by an equally divided court."
So the ruling stands. Songwriter Cyril Vetter owns the worldwide rights to his 1960s hit "Double Shot (Of My Baby's Love)," not just the U.S. rights. Reuters, Billboard, Music Business Worldwide, Copyright Lately and others covered the order within hours. Many headlines said the Court "rejected" the publishers' challenge, and in practice it did. What it didn't do was decide whether the Fifth Circuit got the law right, and that distinction will shape everything that comes next.
The song and the 60-year-old deal
"Double Shot (Of My Baby's Love)" was written by Cyril Vetter and the late Donald Smith in the early 1960s and became a hit for The Swingin' Medallions in 1966, reaching No. 17 on the Billboard Hot 100. According to the Fifth Circuit, the songwriters assigned their rights to Windsong Music Publishers in 1963 in exchange for one dollar. That grant covered the song worldwide. Resnik Music Group, which bought Windsong in 2019, later held the publisher's interest.
The Copyright Act gives authors a way out of deals like that. Under the termination provisions (Sections 203 and 304), an author or the author's heirs can end a transfer of copyright after a fixed period: 56 years after copyright was secured for pre-1978 works, and 35 years after the grant for works transferred on or after January 1, 1978. Congress created these rights because authors usually sign before anyone knows what a work is worth.
Vetter served his termination notice in 2019, effective May 3, 2022. Resnik argued that termination reached only the U.S. rights, and that its rights everywhere else in the world stayed put.
How Vetter won in the lower courts
Vetter sued in federal court in Baton Rouge in 2023, asking for a declaration that he owned the reclaimed rights worldwide. In January 2025, Chief Judge Shelly Dick of the Middle District of Louisiana agreed, declaring Vetter "the sole owner of all right, title, and interest throughout the world" in his share of the song.
On January 12, 2026, the Fifth Circuit affirmed. Its key reasoning, as reported by Music Business Worldwide: "Resnik's interpretation of the statute would deprive Vetter of the full set of rights he originally conveyed to Windsong, which is counter to the purpose of the statute." The court reasoned that termination undoes the grant, and if a U.S. author signed a worldwide grant in the U.S. under U.S. law, terminating it brings back the whole thing. The court also quoted the Artists Rights Institute's amicus brief: cutting off the foreign rights would leave authors "with only half of the apple."
That broke with how the industry had worked for decades. Publishers and labels had generally assumed that U.S. termination brought back only U.S. rights, and they kept collecting money from the rest of the world.
The publishers step in
After the Fifth Circuit ruling, the industry did something unusual. In March 2026, four of the largest music publishers (Capitol CMG of Universal Music Group, Sony's Essential Music Publishing, Warner-Tamerlane Publishing of Warner Music Group, and BMG Rights Management) bought Resnik's interest in the song and took its place as defendants so they could take the case to the Supreme Court themselves. Their legal team was led by former Solicitor General Paul Clement.
Their petition, filed in June, warned that the decision "unsettled '50 years of industry practice'" and "immediately calls into question the scope and meaning of countless negotiated agreements backed by billions of dollars." In their September reply, they urged: "This Court should not let one Fifth Circuit decision radically disrupt copyright worldwide." Studios, labels and scholars filed amicus briefs on their side.
Vetter's team answered that the publishers were trying to keep the benefit of authors' "unequal bargaining position" and "the impossibility of determining a work's value until it has been exploited," exactly the problem Congress wrote termination rights to fix. They also argued the question should be left for other courts to consider first.
Why four justices sat out
The Court's order doesn't explain the recusals. Legal commentators point to a likely reason: BMG is owned by Bertelsmann, which also owns Penguin Random House, and Penguin Random House has published books by all four recused justices. The same thing happened in May 2025 in Baker v. Coates, a copyright case over Ta-Nehisi Coates's novel The Water Dancer that named Bertelsmann as a defendant. The same four justices, plus Justice Alito, recused there too, and that case was also affirmed for lack of a quorum.
As Copyright Lately's Aaron Moss noted, the outcome means the publishers lost not on the merits but because one of their own corporate affiliates made it impossible for the Court to hear the case.
What the order does (and doesn't) do
- Vetter wins his case. The judgment is final: Vetter owns the reclaimed rights to "Double Shot" worldwide.
- No national rule. An affirmance without a quorum is not binding precedent beyond this case. The Fifth Circuit's opinion binds federal courts in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. Courts in other circuits, including the Second (New York) and Ninth (California), where most entertainment cases are filed, are free to disagree.
- Expect forum shopping. Commentators expect authors and heirs to file termination disputes in the Fifth Circuit, while publishers and studios try to get to New York or California first with their own declaratory-judgment suits.
- Foreign courts get a vote. A U.S. court can say who owns the rights, but courts, collecting societies and licensees in the UK, Europe and elsewhere may apply their own laws to who actually gets paid for local exploitation. Reed Smith attorneys and Music Week analysts have both flagged this gap.
- It will come back. Songwriters are already serving termination notices that claim foreign rights. Another case raising the same question will likely reach the Supreme Court, presumably without a Bertelsmann company on the caption.
BMG itself is no stranger to high-stakes copyright litigation. IP Feed tracks its case against Anthropic, BMG Rights Management (US) LLC v. Anthropic PBC, over AI training on song lyrics, and its long-running fights with internet providers in BMG v. Cox and BMG v. Altice. Resnik Music Group also appears in our feed in TufAmerica v. Resnik Music Group.
What this means for filmmakers and other creators
Termination rights aren't just for songwriters. They apply to novels, screenplays, short stories, comics, and the music in your film. Vetter changes the math on both sides of the deal.
If you're the author, your reversion may now be worldwide. If you assigned rights to a script, book or score more than 35 years ago (or more than 56 years after copyright for pre-1978 works), your termination window may be open or coming up. After Vetter, at least in the Fifth Circuit, you can argue that termination brings back foreign rights too, which is often where the long-tail money lives. Notices have strict timing rules (they must be served 2 to 10 years before the effective date and recorded with the Copyright Office), so talk to a lawyer early.
If you're licensing older works, check the termination status. Planning a remake, an adaptation of a 1980s novel, or a needle drop of a 1960s song? The rights you license from a publisher or studio may be subject to a termination notice, and after Vetter, that cloud may extend to international distribution. Ask for the termination history in writing, and expect distributors and E&O insurers to ask too.
Work-for-hire is the big exception. Termination doesn't apply to works made for hire, which is why studios and producers rely on work-for-hire language for employees and certain commissioned works. If you hire writers or composers, make sure your agreements are drafted properly and signed before the work starts. If you're the creator, know which kind of deal you're signing.
Chain of title now has a time dimension. A clean chain of title used to mean you could trace every transfer. Now it also means knowing which transfers could be undone, and where. Keep your contracts, assignments and Copyright Office recordations in one organized place, and update them when rights change.
Track who gets paid when rights shift. When a termination takes effect, money that went to a publisher or studio starts going to the author, and in Vetter-style disputes, foreign revenue may be contested for years. A neutral collection account that pays out according to a documented waterfall makes it much easier to redirect income cleanly when ownership changes.
Follow new termination-rights cases and filings involving BMG, UMG, Sony and Warner Music on IP Feed.
This post is editorial commentary on public court records and news coverage, not legal advice. Details about the history of "Double Shot" and the parties' arguments come from press reports and commentary summarizing the court filings. Reasons for the justices' recusals are as reported by commentators; the Court's order does not state them.