Salt-N-Pepa Files Appeal in Intensifying UMG Termination Battle

Photo Credit: David Burke / CC by 2.0

Let the Salt-N-Pepa v. Universal Music copyright termination battle continue: Now repped by veteran entertainment attorney Richard S. Busch, the rap duo has fired off a firmly worded appeal brief following a lower-court dismissal on contractual-language grounds.

Right on cue, the “Push It” act submitted the more than 60-page appeal yesterday, after filing a related notice in late February. We’ve been covering the showdown in detail from the outset; Salt-N-Pepa levied the action following “failed negotiations” with UMG over multiple termination notices.

As many know, these notices, spearheaded under Section 203 of the Copyright Act, are seeking to enable Salt-N-Pepa to assume ownership of several early recordings.

Furthermore, Salt-N-Pepa is hardly alone in pursuing recaptures – a multifaceted process that, in brief, is said to be on the table for certain copyright transfers finalized under non-work-for-hire agreements in or after 1978.

For obvious reasons, the recaptures aren’t sitting right with the parties on the opposite side of the deals.

UMG moved to dismiss because Salt-N-Pepa members Cheryl James and Sandra Denton had allegedly failed to transfer the copyrights under the appropriate contracts.

In the major’s view, that would render the efforts works for hire and not subject to Section 203 terminations. The district court concurred, finding that the agreements “do not indicate that Plaintiffs ever owned the copyrights to the sound recordings or that they granted a transfer of those rights to anyone else.”

Now, Salt-N-Pepa has pushed back against the lower-court determination as “riddled with error,” “manifestly erroneous,” and containing “an entirely new requirement that finds no basis in the statute, legislative history, binding judicial opinions, or any copyright jurisprudence.”

Said requirement refers to whether Salt-N-Pepa “asserted their ownership of the copyrights” in the contracts despite the alleged absence of any “such requirement under the law.”

“The District Court’s newly-invented requirement (express assertion of ownership) finds no basis in the statute, this Court’s decisions, in the persuasive authorities from its Sister Circuits, nor Supreme Court precedence,” the legal document drives home. “Tellingly, the District Court provides no authority to support this statement of the law.”

Additionally, the district court allegedly “erred in its implicit finding that the sound recordings are works made for hire,” the appeal reads in part.

Unsurprisingly, in light of terminations’ inherent complexity, those are just some of the many angles covered in the appeal. Among other things, the latter explores the technical details associated with copyright transfers and verb tenses’ relevance in the contracts (the “[u]se of present participles in contract signal a present, ongoing, and continuous action or obligation”).

With that, it’ll be worth closely tracking the courtroom confrontation from here. Two angles to bear in mind as the appeal process plays out: As described by Salt-N-Pepa, UMG turned up the heat by pulling the appropriate works from DSPs in the U.S.

And the duo’s “catalog generated approximately one million dollars in royalties in the five months preceding this lawsuit, alone,” according to the filing.

Running with this point, the stakes are even higher than before given Salt-N-Pepa’s mention of the Vetter v. Resnik decision, which found that stateside copyright terminations apply globally in the absence of a geographic limit tied to the underlying transfer.