Amicus Curiae Brief — BMG Rights Management (US) LLC, et al., Petitioners v. Cyril E. Vetter, et al.

Supreme Court briefJul 16, 2026

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No. 25-1391

IN THE

Supreme Court of the United States

____________________

BMG RIGHTS MANAGEMENT (US) LLC ET AL.,

Petitioners,

CYRIL E. VETTER ET AL.,

Respondents.

____________________

On Petition for Writ of Certiorari To The

United States Court of Appeals

For The Fifth Circuit

____________________

BRIEF OF MOTION PICTURE ASSOCIATION,

INC. AS AMICUS CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF

PETITIONERS

____________________

Jonathan D. Hacker

Daniel M. Petrocelli

Jenya Godina

Counsel of Record

O’MELVENY & MYERS LLP

Molly M. Lens

1625 Eye Street, N.W.

Danielle R. Feuer

Washington, D.C. 20006

O’MELVENY & MYERS LLP

(202) 383-5300

1999 Avenue of the Stars

8th Floor

Los Angeles, CA 90067

(310) 553-6700

dpetrocelli@omm.com

Attorneys for Amicus Curiae

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

INTEREST OF AMICUS CURIAE .......................... 1

INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY

OF ARGUMENT .................................................. 2

ARGUMENT ............................................................. 5

I. The Fifth Circuit’s Decision Disrupts The

Landscape of Copyright Deals and

Exploitations ........................................................ 5

A. The Decision Below Will Have

Disruptive Effects On The Film and

Television Industry ................................... 5

B. The Impacts Of The Decision Below

Are Immediate And Of Significant

Magnitude ............................................... 15

II. The Fifth Circuit’s Decision Is Wrong And

Contrary To All Authority ................................. 17

A. U.S. Copyright Termination Does

Not Apply Internationally ...................... 17

B. The U.S. Renewal Copyright

Interest That Reverts When An

Author Predeceases Vesting Encompasses Only U.S. Copyright Rights ........ 22

CONCLUSION ........................................................ 24

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES

Page(s)

Cases

Chappell & Co. Ltd. v. Redwood Music Ltd.,

[1981] R.P.C. 337 ..........................................10, 12

Clancy v. Jack Ryan Enters., Ltd.,

2021 WL 488683 (D. Md. Feb. 10, 2021) ........... 19

Fogerty v. Fantasy, Inc.,

510 U.S. 517 (1994) .............................................. 9

Fred Ahlert Music Corp. v.

Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.,

155 F.3d 17 (2d Cir. 1998) ................................. 19

Fred Fisher Music Co. v. M. Witmark & Sons,

318 U.S. 643 (1943) .............................................. 8

Gloucester Place Music Ltd. v. Le Bon,

[2016] EWHC (Ch) 3091 .................................... 11

Henson v. Santander Consumer USA Inc.,

582 U.S. 79 (2017) .............................................. 21

Impression Prods., Inc. v. Lexmark Int’l, Inc.,

581 U.S. 360 (2017) ............................................ 18

Nat’l Ass’n of Mfrs. v. Dep’t of Def.,

583 U.S. 109 (2018) ............................................ 18

Peer Int’l Corp. v. Termidor Music

Publishers Ltd.,

[2006] EWHC (Ch) 2883 ...............................10, 11

Redwood Music Ltd. v. B. Feldman &

Co. Ltd.,

[1979] R.P.C. 1 ................................................... 11

Rodriguez v. United States,

480 U.S. 522 (1987) ............................................ 24

iii

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES

(continued)

Page(s)

Siegel v. Warner Bros. Ent. Inc.,

542 F. Supp. 2d 1098 (C.D. Cal. 2008),

rev’d in part on other grounds sub

nom. Larson v. Warner Bros. Ent.,

Inc., 504 F. App’x 586 (9th Cir. 2013) ............... 19

Stewart v. Abend,

495 U.S. 207 (1990) .......................................13, 23

Thaler v. Perlmutter,

130 F.4th 1039 (D.C. Cir. 2025) ........................ 20

Twentieth Century Music Corp. v. Aiken,

422 U.S. 151 (1975) .............................................. 9

Unicolors, Inc. v. H&M Hennes &

Mauritz, L.P.,

52 F.4th 1054 (9th Cir. 2022) ............................ 10

Statutes

17 U.S.C. § 106 ........................................................ 18

17 U.S.C. § 203(b)(4) ................................................. 8

17 U.S.C. § 304(c)(6) ............................................ 8, 17

Other Authorities

5 David Nimmer & Melville B. Nimmer,

Nimmer on Copyright § 17.10[B][2] (2026) ....... 23

7 Patry on Copyright § 25:18 (2026) ..................10, 20

Christopher Buccafusco et al., How Big

Is Copyright’s Second Bite?: An

Empirical Assessment of Copyright

Reversion, 75 Duke L.J. 1077 (2026)................. 15

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES

(continued)

Page(s)

Everything You Need To Know About

‘Wicked’ Ahead of the Universal

Pictures Movie, NBC Universal

(Nov. 14, 2024),

https://perma.cc/S6YC-JN7J ............................. 16

H.R. Rep. No. 94-1476 (1976) ................................. 21

Jane C. Ginsburg, International

National Copyright Laws to a

Supranational Code?, 47 J.

Joshua Yuvaraj et al., U.S. Copyright

Termination Notices 1977–2020:

Introducing New Datasets, 19 J.

Empirical Legal Stud. 250 (2022) ..................... 15

Margaret Heidenry, When the Spec

Script Was King, Vanity Fair (Feb.

8, 2013) ............................................................... 16

MPA Comments Regarding the 2026

National Trade Estimate Report on

Foreign Trade Barriers, Motion

Picture Association (Oct. 2025) ........................... 7

Supplementary Report of the Register of

Copyrights on the General Revision of

the U.S. Copyright Law: 1965

Revision Bill, 89th Cong., 1st Sess.

(H. Judiciary Comm. Print 1965) .................21, 22

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES

(continued)

Page(s)

Tim Kappel & Loren Wells, Returning

Music to Its Creator, 5 Fla. Ent. &

Sports L. Rev. 13 (2026) ...................................... 5

U.K. Copyright Act 1911 § 5(2)............................... 11

U.K. Copyright, Designs and Patents

Act 1988, c.48, § 9(3) .......................................... 20

U.S. Copyright Office, Circular 38A:

International Copyright Relations of

the United States (Jan. 2025) ........................... 20

INTEREST OF AMICUS CURIAE1

Amicus Motion Picture Association, Inc. (“MPA”)

is a not-for-profit trade association founded in 1922.

The MPA serves as the voice and advocate of the film

and television industry, advancing the business and

art of storytelling, protecting the creative and artistic freedoms of storytellers, and bringing entertainment and inspiration to audiences worldwide. The

MPA has a particular interest in the proper interpretation of the Copyright Act, as a fair, balanced,

and—particularly relevant here—predictable copyright system is essential to its mission and to the

ability of its members to finance, produce, and distribute compelling entertainment. It regularly participates as amicus in copyright cases of national

and international importance.

The MPA’s members are Amazon Studios LLC,

Netflix Studios, LLC, Paramount Pictures Corporation, Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc., Universal

City Studios LLC, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. These

entities and their affiliates are the leading producers

and distributors in the theatrical, television, and

home-entertainment markets in the U.S. and

abroad.

1 Pursuant to this Court’s Rule 37.6, amicus states that this

brief was not authored in whole or in part by counsel for any

party, and that no person or entity other than amicus or its

counsel made a monetary contribution intended to fund the

preparation or submission of this brief. Counsel for all parties

were timely notified under Rule 37.2(a) of amicus’s intent to file

this brief.

It is critically important to the MPA’s members

that U.S. copyright law be subject to clear, consistent, and enforceable territorial boundaries. Until

the erroneous decisions below, the courts uniformly

agreed, all recognizing that U.S. copyright law does

not apply beyond our nation’s borders to govern

rights and obligations arising under foreign copyright statutes. The district court and the Fifth Circuit have now broken from that long-settled consensus, casting a pall of uncertainty over existing international copyright arrangements and hindering the

negotiation of new rights deals. Nobody benefits

from that uncertainty—deals are harder to reach,

fewer creative projects get produced, and fewer authors get paid.

The MPA submits this amicus brief to highlight

the significance of the errors in the decision below

and to demonstrate their harmful effects on the film

and television industry, both undermining economically productive activity and depriving society of the

benefits of the broad dissemination of cultural

works.

INTRODUCTION AND

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT

The Fifth Circuit’s decision breaks sharply from a

long-settled consensus that U.S. copyright law does

not apply beyond U.S. borders to govern rights arising under foreign copyright laws. That principle is

compelled by the statute’s plain language and history, as recognized by every authority that has addressed the subject. As those authorities recognize,

the international copyrights in a creative work represent a collection of rights arising under the laws of

each of the countries in which the work is disseminated. That settled understanding is one of the bedrock foundations on which film and television

rights—more so than other types of creative works—

are negotiated and projects are developed. The decision below flatly rejects that foundational principle.

According to the Fifth Circuit, when a copyright

arises under U.S. law, that copyright constitutes a

single worldwide right, even as to works disseminated in foreign countries with entirely different copyright rules.

That decision is patently incorrect for the reasons

summarized in Part II below and elaborated in the

petition for certiorari. But more to the point for present purposes, the decision blurs the previously clear

territorial scope of U.S. copyright law, with inevitable negative effects on the enforcement of existing

international rights deals and the negotiation of new

deals. The rule that termination and renewal reversion leave foreign copyright rights untouched has

long formed an essential backdrop for high-stakes

negotiations and valuable investments. In the film

and television industry in particular, the grantees of

rights in a work do much more for the development

of the work than simply promoting and disseminating it. Film and television studios routinely invest

many millions of dollars to build entire entertainment franchises from acquired works, such as novels, comic books, plays, short stories, articles, or a

“spec screenplay” (a screenplay written on the speculation that a studio might later acquire it to serve as

the basis for a movie or TV show). Making such investments to develop these works requires a complex

rights ecosystem—one built upon significant business and risk expectations.

The Fifth Circuit’s decision introduces a destabilizing factor into that ecosystem, disrupting existing

expectations and creating a new obstacle to future

deals between once-natural counterparties to creative and economically beneficial endeavors. When

statutory rights are clearly bounded by territorial

limits, each party knows what rights exist, to whom

they belong, and how to transfer them. But when

territorial limits become less clear, the rights themselves become clouded. Parties now are more likely

to disagree about who owns what and where, making

international rights deals more difficult and costly to

reach. Unless clarity is restored, the ultimate result

will be the impairment of highly productive economic

activity, the shelving of valuable creative works, and

the diminution of authors’ ability to find partners

willing to invest in the development of their works.

The decision below also sets U.S. law on a collision course with foreign courts, forcing stakeholders

to operate in a world where courts in the Fifth Circuit and courts in foreign jurisdictions will reach opposite conclusions about the same rights. In this untenable landscape, no one knows what they can lawfully do, meaning that rational actors in the film and

television space may decide not to pursue exploitation of certain works, rather than overpay for rights

or face a high risk of litigation.

Respondents’ admitted strategy throughout this

litigation has been to advance a “fringe” theory with

the goal of “reach[ing] the Supreme Court.” Tim

Kappel & Loren Wells, Returning Music to Its Crea-

tor, 5 Fla. Ent. & Sports L. Rev. 13, 14 (2026). Having persuaded the Fifth Circuit to endorse that

“fringe” theory, with the sweeping consequences just

described and further elaborated below, Respondents

should not be permitted to back away from the second part of their playbook. This Court should grant

review and restore the broad consensus that U.S.

ARGUMENT

I. The Fifth Circuit’s Decision Disrupts The

Landscape of Copyright Deals and Exploitations

The effects of the decision below are immediate

and wide-ranging, with negative impacts on studios,

production companies, distributors, authors, heirs,

and others dealing in copyright rights anywhere in

the world, as well as the public at large. This

Court’s intervention is urgently needed.

A. The Decision Below Will Have Disruptive

Effects On The Film and Television Industry

The Fifth Circuit’s decision undermines international movie and television rights deals both by disrupting longstanding understandings that have

formed the foundation for fruitful negotiations between authors and rights grantees and by setting

the stage for a procedural morass in international

and domestic courts.

1. Disrupted negotiations will lead to fewer economically productive deals, lost opportunities for authors, and the shelving of culture. Rights deals have

long been negotiated and executed against the onceuncontroversial background understanding that copyright termination under the U.S. Copyright Act affected only the U.S. copyright rights in a work. As

the Petition details, that is the rule found in every

this case, and, most importantly, on the face of the

statutory language itself. See Pet. 18-23; see also infra Part II.A. The same understanding of the effects

of copyright renewal reversion has likewise been the

longstanding consensus. See infra Part II.B.

Little wonder, then, that—prior to the Fifth Circuit’s decision—terminating parties invariably recognized that their terminations did not grant them

terminating parties freely acknowledged that principle in their own pleadings in high-profile litigation.

See, e.g., Complaint, Yonay v. Paramount Pictures

Corp., No. 2:22-cv-3846 (C.D. Cal. June 6, 2022), at

¶ 19 (Top Gun: Maverick litigation) (recognizing that

termination provisions effectuate “recovery of the

U.S. copyright”); id. ¶ 20 (acknowledging that “because the Copyright Act has no extraterritorial application, foreign rights … remain with Paramount … notwithstanding [the] Termination Notice”); Complaint, Thomas v. Twentieth Century Fox

Film Corp., No. 3:21-cv-2720 (N.D. Cal. Apr. 15,

2021), at ¶¶ 25-26 (Predator litigation) (same).

Prior to the test case manufactured by Respondents, the termination rights landscape was thus

characterized by stability and settled expectations,

with each party coming to the table with leverage for

negotiation. That backdrop allowed for productive

deals that not only left the parties to such deals bet-

ter off, but also generated significant economic activity with society-wide benefits. See MPA Comments

Regarding the 2026 National Trade Estimate Report

on Foreign Trade Barriers, Motion Picture Association 2-3 (Oct. 2025) (reporting that, in 2023 alone,

the U.S. motion picture, television, and streaming

industry generated $22.6 billion in export revenue

and that its trade surplus was $15.3 billion—or 6%

of the total U.S. private-sector trade surplus in services—with content distribution in over 130 countries).

The decision below has imperiled the environment of mutual understanding that facilitates such

activity. Emboldened by the Fifth Circuit’s erroneous ruling, terminating parties have already begun

asserting the manifestly incorrect position that, by

exercising their termination rights, they regain not

only their U.S. copyright rights in a work, but also

the foreign rights that all previously understood as

remaining with the rights transferee. Studios, for

their part, reject terminating parties’ reliance on the

deeply flawed decision below and continue to maintain that they retain the foreign rights. They will

accordingly be unwilling to pay for what they already rightfully own. The same positional mismatch

will characterize negotiations involving renewal

rights reversions. With entrenched parties unable to

see eye to eye on such a basic premise underlying

their discussions, many deals that previously would

have been relatively straightforward simply will not

happen.

That result is detrimental to authors, studios,

and the public alike. Authors will effectively lose the

“second chance” at profiting from the rights in their

work that all agree Congress intended to provide to

them via the Copyright Act’s termination provisions.

Pet. App. 10. The disadvantage to authors is especially acute because the studio previously holding

the rights to the work is, more often than not, the

most motivated buyer for the rights an author regains through termination.2 Because the studio has,

in many cases, invested millions of dollars in the

work and holds the rights to the copyrightable new

expression in its derivative franchises, any other

buyer would have to steer clear of all of the copyrightable elements created by the studio in the

course of its exploitation of the original work—not to

mention the studio’s trademarks and other rights—

and therefore of the vast majority of the work’s contemporary value. What is more, any party considering purchasing the highly disputed international

rights to a work in reliance on the Fifth Circuit’s decision, even as the original studio maintains its continued ownership of those rights, is effectively purchasing a lawsuit—one in which its position would

be tenuous at best. Simply put, “[n]obody would pay

an author for something he cannot sell,” such that

renewal and termination interests may ultimately be

rendered “worthless.” Fred Fisher Music Co. v. M.

Witmark & Sons, 318 U.S. 643, 657 (1943). That the

Fifth Circuit’s decision may sound the death knell

for many deals between authors and transferee studios thus inevitably leaves authors worse off.

2 Indeed, the statutory scheme expressly facilitates bring-

ing the original grantor and grantee back to the negotiating

table as the presumptive parties to a new rights deal by providing for an exclusive renegotiation window for the terminated

grantee. See 17 U.S.C. §§ 203(b)(4), 304(c)(6)(D).

The ultimate effect of this market distortion will

be not only a reduction of economically productive

activity, but the widespread shelving of culture—

contrary to the policies animating the Copyright Act

and to the detriment of society as a whole. This

Court has repeatedly recognized that copyright law

should promote “broad public availability of literature, music, and the other arts” and “stimulate artistic creativity for the general public good.” Twentieth

Century Music Corp. v. Aiken, 422 U.S. 151, 156

(1975); see also, e.g., Fogerty v. Fantasy, Inc., 510

U.S. 517, 524 (1994) (“The primary objective of the

good of the public.”). By undermining dealmaking

between authors and the studios that have made, or

could make, substantial investments in their works,

the Fifth Circuit’s decision frustrates those goals.

2. The decision below is poised to create an international procedural morass of conflicting rulings

and asymmetries. The film and television industry

does not operate in a domestic bubble. Worldwide

releases require parties to see eye to eye on who

owns all of the requisite copyright rights throughout

the world. The decision below makes the necessary

cohesion increasingly difficult by teeing up conflicts

with foreign sovereigns, who will not credit the Fifth

Circuit’s decision as changing the operation of their

own national copyright laws.

The decision below announces new rules (in the

Fifth Circuit) for the foreign copyright rights in

works of U.S. origin. But for the most part, it will be

foreign courts that will be forced to adjudicate claims

of foreign infringement, because foreign infringe-

ment claims are brought under the laws of the country of infringement, not the country of origin of the

work. See, e.g., Unicolors, Inc. v. H&M Hennes &

Mauritz, L.P., 52 F.4th 1054, 1079 (9th Cir. 2022).

And these foreign courts are not bound to follow a

U.S. court decision about the operation of foreign

departs from all other authority on the subject. As

the Patry treatise puts it: “A U.S. court can opine

that there are not foreign rights after termination,

but that’s meaningless in that foreign country,

where a foreign court would surely ignore it as a serious breach of comity, and simply incorrect.” 7

Patry on Copyright § 25:18 (2026).

One prominent illustration is U.K. law, which is

contrary to the decision below at every turn. First,

U.K. decisions consistently adhere to a territorial notion of copyright (the consensus view apart from the

decision below), whereby there is, for any given

work, a U.K. copyright and a U.S. copyright and a

French copyright and so forth, rather than a single

master copyright worldwide. See, e.g., Peer Int’l

Corp. v. Termidor Music Publishers Ltd. [2006]

EWHC (Ch) 2883 (discussing status of “English copyright” in songs composed by Cuban nationals, notwithstanding Cuban law that voided disposition as

to Cuban copyright in songs); Chappell & Co. Ltd. v.

Redwood Music Ltd. [1981] R.P.C. 337 (discussing

scope of assignment of renewal interest in U.S. work,

and differentiating “U.S.A. copyright in the song”

from “U.K. copyright” in it).

Second, U.K. law would not give effect to a purported termination of a grant of that U.K. copyright

by virtue of the U.S. termination scheme embodied

in Section 203 or Section 304. At the outset, subject

to estoppel and related principles that may apply on

the facts of specific cases, foreign courts are not

bound by U.S. precedents, and the rationale of the

decision below conflicts both with the termination

provisions’ textual exclusion of foreign rights and

with other courts’ territorial conception of copyright.

Indeed, U.K. courts limit the U.K.’s since-repealed

reversionary right to the U.K. copyright in a work—

even without the aid of the clear limiting language

that appears in the U.S. termination provisions, cf.

U.K. Copyright Act 1911 § 5(2)—and confer that

right within the U.K. equally on domestic and foreign authors and heirs. See Redwood Music Ltd. v.

B. Feldman & Co. Ltd. [1979] R.P.C. 1. But even if

the Fifth Circuit’s rationale were sound, U.K. courts

would still reject any such termination by operation

of U.S. law of the grantee’s U.K. copyright. That result is apparent from the case of Peer International,

wherein U.K. courts refused to give effect to Cuban

Law 860 (which otherwise would have voided Peer’s

subject songs; it was found “expropriatory without

compensation and on that account such as not to

have taken effect so far as concerned English copyright.” [2006] EWHC (Ch) 2883, at 54; see also, e.g.,

Gloucester Place Music Ltd. v. Le Bon [2016] EWHC

(Ch) 3091 [16]-[17].

Third, U.K. courts would not void a transfer of a

U.K. copyright where the renewal interest under

U.S. law reverted to an author’s heirs because the

author did not survive to the vesting of the renewal.

That interpretation is premised on the “one copyright” theory to which U.K. courts do not subscribe;

it runs into the same Peer International problem as

the termination issue; and it is contrary to U.K.

courts’ understanding of the renewal interest as one

that concerns the U.S. copyright and not the U.K.

[1981] R.P.C. 337, at 349-50.

So what happens when, say, an author has terminated a grant of copyright rights in a U.S. work to

a studio under Section 203 or Section 304, and the

studio stops its domestic exploitation of the rights

but continues to exploit the rights in the U.K.? By

the logic of the decision below, the heir actually recaptured worldwide rights, and the studio’s U.K. exploitation is infringing. But if the heir brought an

infringement action in the U.K., or the studio sought

a declaration of rights there, the U.K. court would

reach the opposite conclusion and permit the studio

to continue its U.K. exploitation.

And what if the heir conveyed the rights under

the terminated grant to a competing studio, which

then exploited the rights in the U.K. in line with the

decision below? The original studio could bring a

successful infringement action against the competing

studio in the U.K., notwithstanding that the Fifth

Circuit would consider the competing studio to own

the rights throughout the world by virtue of the termination interest.

The same holds for the renewal interest. Consider the situation where an author granted a studio

his worldwide copyright rights in a work of U.S.

origin, including the original and renewal terms of

fective. See, e.g., Stewart v. Abend, 495 U.S. 207,

211, 220-21 (1990). And suppose that the author’s

heir granted the renewal rights to a competing studio. It is clear that the original studio lacks the U.S.

the competing studio. But what if the original studio

continues to exploit the work—or even just its preexisting derivative works based on it—in the U.K., as

it is permitted to do under existing law? According

to the decision below, the renewal interest actually

comprised both U.S. and foreign copyright rights,

and the original studio’s U.K. exploitation is infringing (even though the U.K. does not even recognize a

renewal term). But if the heir brought an infringement action in the U.K., or the studio sought a declaration of rights there, the U.K. court would conclude the opposite. And if the competing studio exploited the work in the U.K. using the logic of the

decision below, the original studio could successfully

sue it for infringement in a U.K. court.

And what of the movie theaters and merchandisers caught up in the fray? Will a movie theater in

the U.K. risk showing either studio’s film, knowing

that a U.S. court might consider it infringing to display the original studio’s film, while a U.K. court

would consider it infringing to display the competing

studio’s film? Will licensed merchandisers be willing

to make or sell toys or posters based on either film

there?

As these permutations—which, to be clear, are

simply isolated examples—demonstrate, the Fifth

Circuit’s decision creates conflicts not only among

U.S. authorities, but also with foreign sovereigns.

And it yields a legal landscape that is fundamentally

unworkable—even setting aside that, as discussed

below, see infra Part II, it is flatly wrong as a matter

of law.

What is more, with its focus on domestic authors

and heirs, the Fifth Circuit overlooked the devastating impact of its holdings on foreign authors and

heirs, who have long been understood to enjoy the

same copyright termination and renewal reversion

rights in the U.S. as their U.S.-based counterparts.

The rule announced by the Fifth Circuit obliterates

that once-settled entitlement because, under the

court’s logic, the U.S. copyright termination regime

applies only to works of U.S. origin. See Pet. App.

22; infra at 19 (discussing Fifth Circuit’s view that a

country of origin and merely recognized elsewhere).

That outcome not only would run afoul of the U.S.’s

obligation under the Berne Convention to provide

authors from member states with the same rights

that the U.S. grants to its own nationals, see Pet. 2829, but it also would undercut those stakeholders’

previous rights deals and freeze new deals in their

tracks. In short, the decision below leaves in its

wake an unsustainable status quo and an inevitable

procedural morass.

3. The decision below threatens to flood domestic

courts with litigation. The chaos described above

will not be confined to international courts. Terminating parties faced with adverse rulings abroad

may well take to U.S. courts in an effort to circumvent those decisions by crafting novel legal theories

to take advantage of the Fifth Circuit’s ruling. The

procedural morass spawned by the decision below

thus threatens to clog courts both at home and

abroad.

B. The Impacts Of The Decision Below Are

Immediate And Of Significant Magnitude

As explained, see supra Part I.A, as long as the

decision below remains on the books, it will have the

immediate effect of overshadowing and distorting

negotiations industrywide. It will also inevitably

have a direct impact on litigation outcomes as races

to the courthouse play out across the country and internationally, with terminating parties striving to

assert their claims within the Fifth Circuit to take

advantage of its outlier rule. See Pet. 34-35. The

harmful effects of the decision below will thus have

broad and immediate sweep.

Nor is statutory termination merely a theoretical

remedy invoked in a handful of famous disputes. On

the contrary, it is a mechanism used repeatedly and

systematically across industries. Numerous termination notices are recorded each year: a recent empirical study reports 13,565 notices corresponding to

over 100,000 unique titles from 1978 through June

2021. Christopher Buccafusco et al., How Big Is

of Copyright Reversion, 75 Duke L.J. 1077, 1107

(2026); see also Joshua Yuvaraj et al., U.S. Copyright

Termination Notices 1977–2020: Introducing New

Datasets, 19 J. Empirical Legal Stud. 250, 260 (2022)

(reporting similar totals for 1977-2020 period). Notably, that data captures only a fraction of terminations of post-1978 grants under Section 203, which

began to take effect in 2013. With the post-1978

termination regime still in its early stages, the num-

ber of terminations will continue to grow. See, e.g.,

Margaret Heidenry, When the Spec Script Was King,

Vanity Fair (Feb. 8, 2013) (noting that the “boom

years” of spec script sales “lasted roughly from 1990

to 2008,” portending a wave of upcoming terminations as the 35-year termination period under Section 203 approaches for these works).

Forthcoming terminations are especially salient

to current negotiations because it is commonplace in

the film and television industry for adaptations to

take place decades after the underlying work was

created or adaptation rights were first granted. The

2024 film adaptation of Wicked, for example, was released 21 years after the 2003 Broadway musical

and 29 years after the 1995 novel. See Everything

You Need To Know About ‘Wicked’ Ahead of the Universal Pictures Movie, NBC Universal (Nov. 14,

2024), https://perma.cc/S6YC-JN7J. A studio considering a major investment will thus consider not only

who owns the rights today, but also whether the

rights will be terminable soon and the financial impact of any such termination. The legal issues muddied by the decision below thus play a significant

role in today’s negotiations over works for which

termination windows may be approaching or are already open, given that deals must account for

worldwide theatrical, streaming, sequels, remakes,

merchandising, soundtrack, stage/film cross-rights,

and decades of downstream exploitation. The postVetter mismatch of views over who can exploit a

property globally so significantly disrupts the negotiations that deals may simply not occur.

II. The Fifth Circuit’s Decision Is Wrong And

Contrary To All Authority

Under the rule embraced by the decision below,

both the Copyright Act’s copyright termination provisions and the copyright renewal reversion regime

under the 1909 Copyright Act apply beyond this nation’s borders to govern foreign copyright rights.

Both aspects of the Fifth Circuit’s decision are not

only disruptive for the reasons just described, but

are also based on manifestly incorrect reasoning.

A. U.S. Copyright Termination Does Not

Apply Internationally

The Fifth Circuit’s ruling on the scope of termination rights erred at every turn. Among numerous

other flaws in its reasoning, the court misconstrued

the plain language of the Copyright Act based on an

ill-conceived reconceptualization of the nature of a

facile invocation of statutory purpose.

Statutory text. The statute’s plain language could

not be clearer: “Termination of a grant under this

subsection affects only those rights covered by the

grant that arise under this title [Title 17, Copyrights], and in no way affects rights arising under

any other Federal, State, or foreign laws.” 17 U.S.C.

§ 304(c)(6)(E). Thus, copyright termination terminates the original grantee’s U.S. copyright rights in

the subject work,3 but leaves intact those grants of

3 Subject to a carve-out for preexisting derivative works.

U.S.C. § 304(c)(6)(A).

The first clause explains that copyright termination does not extinguish an entire grant, but rather

only those constituent rights that arise under U.S.

have any extraterritorial operation,” Impression

Prods., Inc. v. Lexmark Int’l, Inc., 581 U.S. 360, 379

(2017) (quotations omitted), it necessarily follows

that the rights that “arise under” Title 17—such as

the rights of reproduction, distribution, performance,

and display, 17 U.S.C. § 106—are rights to exclusively exploit a work in the U.S.

The second clause reinforces the first, eliminating

any doubt that copyright termination does not extend to any rights other than federal copyright rights

that may be found in the same grant. It expressly

states that copyright termination “in no way affects”

rights under other federal laws (e.g., U.S. trademark

rights); rights under state laws (e.g., standard contractual rights; common-law trademark rights); and

rights under foreign laws (e.g., foreign copyright

rights), even if such rights were conveyed in the

same instrument as the grant of federal copyright

rights that is subject to termination.

Section

304(c)(6)(E) thus presents the paradigmatic example

of statutory interpretation that not only “begins with

the statutory text” but also, by virtue of the unambiguous meaning of that text, “ends there as well.”

Nat’l Ass’n of Mfrs. v. Dep’t of Def., 583 U.S. 109, 127

(2018) (quotations omitted). Indeed, the statutory

language is so clear that every other court to address

the issue has recognized that a terminating party

recaptures only domestic rights. See Siegel v. Warner Bros. Ent. Inc., 542 F. Supp. 2d 1098, 1140 (C.D.

Cal. 2008) (“the statutory text [of Section

304(c)(6)(E)] could not be any clearer on this subject”), rev’d in part on other grounds sub nom. Larson

v. Warner Bros. Ent., Inc., 504 F. App’x 586 (9th Cir.

2013); Clancy v. Jack Ryan Enters., Ltd., 2021 WL

488683, at *46 (D. Md. Feb. 10, 2021); Fred Ahlert

Music Corp. v. Warner/Chappell Music, Inc., 155

F.3d 17, 20 (2d Cir. 1998).

The Fifth Circuit missed that straightforward

conclusion because it gravely misconstrued the statutory text. Writing the foreign-laws exclusion out of

the statute altogether, the court asserted that there

was “no explicit geographical limitation in section

304(c)(6)(E) that restricts the exploitation of [Respondent’s] rights to uses within the United States.”

Pet. App. 9. The court reached that startling conclusion by conceptualizing copyright as a single worldwide copyright interest granted under the law of the

country of origin and recognized abroad pursuant to

treaty obligations. Id. at 22. Viewed through that

faulty lens, the statute’s limitation of the effect of

termination to rights “that arise under this title”

was no limitation at all: instead, it encompassed “all

of [Respondent’s] rights—including his copyright to

the extent that it extends internationally.” Id. at 9.

The Fifth Circuit’s construction flouts the wellsettled principle that U.S. copyright rights arise under U.S. copyright law, while foreign copyright

rights arise under foreign laws. See, e.g., Jane C.

Ginsburg, International Copyright: From a “Bundle”

of National Copyright Laws to a Supranational

(“[A]t present we have a system of interlocking national copyrights, woven together by the principle of

national treatment.”); U.S. Copyright Office, Circu-

lar 38A: International Copyright Relations of the

United States (Jan. 2025) (“There is no such thing as

an ‘international copyright’ that will automatically

protect an author’s writings throughout the world.

Protection against unauthorized use in a particular

country depends on the national laws of that country.”). In other words, each country determines

whether, and on what terms, a copyright arises within its borders. That is why, for example, a work generated autonomously by artificial intelligence in the

U.S. may receive copyright protection in the U.K.

even though U.S. courts have held that such a work

would be ineligible for copyright protection in the

U.S. Compare U.K. Copyright, Designs and Patents

“computer-generated” work); with Thaler v. Perlmutter, 130 F.4th 1039, 1041 (D.C. Cir. 2025) (holding

that copyright requires human authorship). The

Fifth Circuit’s reasoning failed to recognize the territorial nature of copyright, instead mistakenly treating the country of origin as controlling. That error

was so glaring that the Patry treatise was promptly

updated to reject it:

Congress can no more grant rights in France

than France can grant rights in the U.S. In this

respect the court of appeals is dead wrong in

denying there are multiple and separate copyright interests in each country, rather than a single overarching international copyright that each

country is required to honor.

7 Patry on Copyright § 25:18.

Statutory purpose. The Fifth Circuit compounded

its misreading of the statute’s text with a misplaced

reliance on its broad purpose. In the Fifth Circuit’s

view, the termination provisions’ objectives of “safeguard[ing] against an unremunerative transfer” and

“correct[ing] for … unequal bargaining power” reaffirmed its designation of Respondent as the “sole

owner … throughout the world” of the recaptured

No. 94-1476, at 124 (1976)). Even accepting for the

sake of argument the Fifth Circuit’s simplistic assessment of the statute’s purpose and the effect of its

holding, this Court has admonished that “it is quite

mistaken to assume . . . that whatever might appear

to further the statute’s primary objective must be

the law.” Henson v. Santander Consumer USA Inc.,

582 U.S. 79, 89 (2017) (cleaned up). But as explained, see supra at 7-8, the real-world effect of the

Fifth Circuit’s rule will be to harm authors by jeopardizing the very deals that would have provided

them with remuneration. Statutory purpose thus

cannot bear the weight placed on it by the Fifth Circuit.

Indeed, the legislative history, to the extent it

sheds light on statutory purpose, cuts against the

Fifth Circuit’s analysis. The Register of Copyrights

explained in a report to Congress that the statute

“makes clear that termination affects only those

rights arising under the U.S. copyright statute and

has no effect, for example, on foreign rights that may

be covered by the same contract.” Supplementary

Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General

Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law: 1965 Revision

Bill, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., at 75 (H. Judiciary

Comm. Print 1965) (emphasis added). And the same

report directly contradicts the Fifth Circuit’s charac-

terization of the statute’s purpose, clarifying that the

termination provisions were not intended solely to

benefit authors and their heirs, but instead sought to

effectuate a “compromise” that “would be of practical

benefit to authors and their families without being

unfair to publishers, film producers, and other users.” Id. at 72. The legislative history thus confirms

that the limited scope of copyright termination—

including its exclusion of non-copyright rights and

foreign rights—is part of a careful legislative design.

B. The U.S. Renewal Copyright Interest

That Reverts When An Author Predeceases Vesting Encompasses Only U.S.

The Fifth Circuit’s reasoning with respect to the

reversion of renewal copyright interests was equally

flawed. See Pet. 16. According to the decision below,

when a U.S. renewal copyright interest under the

1909 Copyright Act reverts to an author’s heirs because the author predeceased the renewal period,

that interest encompasses domestic and foreign copyright rights alike. Pet. App. 27-28. Much like the

court’s ruling on termination, that holding runs afoul

of all other authority and again defies the territorial

nature of copyright.

Just like the U.S. copyright termination interest,

the U.S. renewal copyright interest under the 1909

Act is tied to the domestic rights in a work, not foreign rights. No other country shared the copyright

renewal structure in place in the U.S. under the

1909 Act, and its idiosyncratic rules do not divest

grantees of foreign rights by operation of U.S. law.

When a grant of the U.S. renewal interest fails be-

cause the author did not survive to vesting, the U.S.

heirs, but the transfer of any foreign rights that

were part of the same grant is unaffected. This is

because the original grant was for the entire term of

term, not bifurcated like the U.S. term under the

1909 Act. The domestic nature of such reversion is a

natural corollary of the fact that U.S. copyright law

lacks extraterritorial application. See 5 David Nimmer & Melville B. Nimmer, Nimmer on Copyright

§ 17.10[B][2] (2026) (“Given that copyright laws exert no extraterritorial impact, it is no more appropriate to apply the renewal aspect of U.S. copyright

law in other jurisdictions than it is to apply any other aspect of U.S. law abroad”; accordingly, when an

“author does not survive until renewal vesting … the

publisher ceases to own any rights in the United

States upon commencement of the renewal term,”

but U.S. renewal law does not divest the grantee of

its foreign rights).

The Fifth Circuit brushed aside this logic and refused to credit the Nimmer treatise largely because

“the renewal provision makes no mention of geographical limitations” and the contrary position was

“consistent” with the statutory purpose of affording

“the author a second chance to obtain fair remuneration for his creative efforts and to provide the author’s family a ‘new estate’ if the author died before

the renewal period arrived.” Pet. App. 27 (quoting

Abend, 495 U.S. at 220). That rationale does not

withstand even minimal scrutiny. The court failed

to grapple with the U.S.-specific nature of the underlying renewal structure described above and effected

an unwarranted overextension of Abend by again

overlooking the principle that “no legislation pursues

its purposes at all costs,” such that “it frustrates rather than effectuates legislative intent simplistically

to assume that whatever furthers the statute’s primary objective must be the law.” Rodriguez v. United States, 480 U.S. 522, 525-26 (1987) (per curiam).

The Fifth Circuit’s decision is thus not only

profoundly destabilizing in a manner that cannot

await further percolation, but it is also wrong twice

over. This Court’s intervention is urgently warranted.

CONCLUSION

For the foregoing reasons and those set forth in

the Petition, the Court should grant certiorari.

Respectfully submitted,

Jonathan D. Hacker

Jenya Godina

O’MELVENY & MYERS LLP

1625 Eye Street, N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20006

(202) 383-5300

Daniel M. Petrocelli

Counsel of Record

Molly M. Lens

Danielle R. Feuer

O’MELVENY & MYERS LLP

1999 Avenue of the Stars

8th Floor

Los Angeles, CA 90067

(310) 553-6700

dpetrocelli@omm.com

Attorneys for Amicus Curiae

July 16, 2026

This is a copy of a public record, reproduced as it was published. It is not legal advice, and it may not be the version a court would rely on. Check the official source before you cite it.