Songwriter Tells SCOTUS to Ignore Music Companies’ Bid to Retain Foreign Copyright in His Song

A songwriter told the U.S. Supreme Court this week to reject an attempt by the four largest music companies in the world to reverse a Fifth Circuit ruling granting him all rights to the 1966 Swingin’ Medallions single, “Double Shot (Of My Baby’s Love).”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued an opinion in January 2026 in Vetter v. Resnick, affirming the Middle District of Louisiana’s grant of summary judgment declaring that Cyril Vetter, co-author of “Double Shot,” and Vetter’s affiliated companies are the sole owners of the copyright to the song throughout the world. The Fifth Circuit found no error with the district court’s declaration based on Vetter’s own recaptured interest in the song, as the termination rights exercised by Vetter arose under U.S. law and does not violate the Berne Convention or other international treaties, and found that Vetter’s acquisition of renewal rights from the heirs of “Double Shot” co-author Donald Smith entitled Vetter to a renewal copyright including all rights originally granted by Smith without any limit to the geographical scope of those renewal rights.

The companies—Capitol CMG, Essential Music Publishing, Warner-Tamerlane Publishing, and BMG Rights Management, which are owned by Universal, Sony, Warner and BMG—petitioned the Court in June, asking it to consider whether reversion of copyright rights to owners under U.S. law extends worldwide “to dictate the ownership of foreign copyrights.”

The companies contend that Vetter advanced a “’fringe’ theory that bucks the ‘common industry reading of the statute,’ in hopes of ‘reach[ing] the Supreme Court.’” The Fifth Circuit is the only Circuit to have weighed in on the issue, and held that “all copyright rights—foreign and domestic alike—in U.S. works arise under U.S. law,” according to the petition. “Unless and until the Court intervenes, uncertainty will bedevil every author-publisher interaction, and the comity that typifies international cooperation on copyright law will be endangered by the Fifth Circuit’s unsound holding,” claimed the companies.

But Vetter argued that there is no circuit conflict, which is reason enough to deny the petition, and that the Fifth Circuit’s holding was right because “Congress broadly defined a ‘transfer of copyright ownership’ to include an ‘assignment … or any other conveyance’ of a copyright, ‘whether or not it is limited in … place of effect.’”

Vetter dismissed the companies’ contention that the case represents an emergency for the Court to intervene in, arguing that “publishers are doing just fine and will continue to thrive even if some of them have slightly less bargaining power with which to deprive authors of a fair return when their works become wildly successful.”

Five amici have also weighed in in favor of the petitioners, including 20 copyright and IP law professors. The professors argue that the Fifth Circuit’s ruling violates both the principle of territoriality and the principle of national treatment, and could disrupt U.S. foreign relations. “By contradicting the fundamental principles of international intellectual property law, the Fifth’s Circuit’s decision disrupts the foreign relations of the United States and creates tremendous uncertainty for domestic and foreign copyright owners, assignees, and licensees alike,” the brief said.

Other amici supporting the companies include Paramount Pictures, the Motion Picture Association, the Recording Industry Association of America, and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.