The underlying story is a classic one of an artist whose works weren’t published or recognized for their importance until after the artist’s death. The legal angle in the case revolves around whether the artist’s estate or his former landlords own the common-law copyrights in the works the artist created.
The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), which works under the umbrella of the Librarian of Congress, sets statutory-license royalty terms and rates. The U.S. Courts of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit recently issued two notable decisions about the CRB.
Interpreting entertainment-industry contract clauses or even whether there is an enforceable agreement often can be tricky. This article summarizes three recent court decisions dealing with these concerns.
Most sampling disputes are settled, but today there are enough legal guidelines to constructively analyze potential or actual sampling claims. This article examines several 2026 court decisions involving music sampling disputes.
It’s been an active season for the federal appeals courts on the copyright law front. This article summarizes three of these recent circuit court decisions.
Certain substantive aspects of trademark law and practice are now meaningfully different between the UK and EU, and procedural differences that were already present are now more pronounced. These changes raise important considerations for entertainment businesses operating across Europe.
On Dec. 1, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Cox Communications Inc. v. Sony Music Entertainment. The case turned on whether Internet Service Providers could be “contributorily liable for copyright infringement, when the provider knew that specific subscribers were using its service to flagrantly infringe and continued to supply those repeat infringers with service.”
Agreements among band members typically provide for who owns rights in a music group’s name when a founding member leaves and/or a new member joins. But what if there’s no intra-band agreement covering these scenarios? The two recent court decisions in this article offer potential outcomes.
Two federal courts recently issued rulings on notable issues impacting whether and how artists can terminate prior assignments of copyrights in their works.
There are two key federally created entities whose mission it is to issue licenses and collect royalties on behalf of rights holders for digital transmissions of music: SoundExchange and the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC). This article reports on recent court rulings over whether the plaintiffs had viable causes of action related to SoundExchange and MLC royalty payments.
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