Facts as rare as a winning lottery ticket, but not so sweet.

One of the tunes on the “Saturday Night Live” movie is “Disco Inferno”; and the facts surrounding that song’s renewal are the makings of a rare copyright question.

Two collaborators, Kersy and Green, were joint authors to the song when they wrote it in 1977 after the 1976 Copyright Act was passed, but before it was enabled in 1978. So, the song was covered under the 1909 Act, and was granted an initial term of 28 years, plus an opportunity for another 28 years if a timely renewal was filed.

When the time window to file the renewal came up, the joint authors had long previously been assigned to a series of owners. Dreamworks most recently had assigned it on to another assignees finally Dimensional Music Publishing (DMP). The DMP assignee filed the renewal document on January 5th, 2005, which is about as soon after that renewal window opens that anyone can file it.

So, far the facts are fairly standard; and, here is where the anomolous fact comes in: Kersey, one of the two original collaborators and a joint author, both filed a renewal application for the work in his own name; and then died three weeks later. Kersey filed his individual renewal on January 13th, but because Kersey submitted the wrong amount of monies to pay the renewal fees, the renewal was not operative until April 5, 2006.

Why is this a rare combination of facts?

First, because all copyrights expire at the end of a calendar year and the renewal window in which the renewal must be filed extends all twelve months of that renewal window year. Second, although transfer owners eligible to renew the copyrights that the transfer owners has taken by assignment, that right is predicated upon the author being alive when the renewal is effected.

The question of whether the renewal rights vested in DMP in the three weeks before Kersey died is the open issue before Judge Jan Dubois in the Eastern District of Pennsylvia. On July 12th, 2006, the Judge signed an order denying reconsideration of her earlier ruling which made the renewal term vest in the name of DMP. Stay tuned to see if it is appealed. The case is Dimensional Publishing v. Kersey.

This entry was posted by Kate Spelman on Sunday, July 23rd, 2006 at 3:17 pm and is filed under Copyrights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.