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9th Cir. Appellate Arguments; FL Sup. Ct. Ruling on Pre-'72 Recordings

By Scott Graham and Celia Ampel

Just a few days after the Florida Supreme Court ruled the state's common law doesn't provide pre-1972 sound recordings with rights to public performance royalties, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit heard oral arguments on whether remasterings inject pre-1972 sound recordings with federal copyright protection.

CBS Corp. is at least one-third of the way back toward trial on whether it owes royalties under California law for streaming pre-1972 recordings over the Internet. During the November oral arguments in ABS Entertainment Inc. v. CBS Corp., 16-55917, Federal Circuit Judge Richard Linn, sitting as a visiting judge for the Ninth Circuit, sounded extremely skeptical of the broadcaster's defense that the process of digitally remastering hits from the 1960s and 1970s made them derivative works and therefore subject to post-1972 federal copyright law, under which sound recording owners receive no public performance royalties for terrestrial radio broadcasts. (CBS says it paid required royalties for online streaming of post-Feb. 15, 1972, recordings.)

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