With that in mind, he is now petitioning the US Supreme Court asking it to consider "whether a time-barred assertion of sole authorship status by one co-author may, under the discovery accrual rule, form the basis for a statute of limitations affirmative defence against the other co-author's action for declaratory relief under ". Englishman Richard Finch will take a three-shot lead into the final round of the New Zealand Open tomorrow after his best round of the week so far saw him capitalise on Australian Steven Bowditch. But, Finch reckons, both courts got it wrong. Successfully defeating that claim is necessary to terminate the 1983 agreement. Earlier this year both a district court and the Eleventh Circuit Appeals Court agreed that Finch did indeed have a 2018 deadline to dispute Casey's authorship claim. There is a statute of limitations for copyright disputes, and Casey has argued that - if Finch wanted to formally dispute his claim to sole authorship of the songs - he should have done so by 2018. Finch then sent another notice of termination in 2019, subsequently going legal on the matter in 2021. But Casey did respond, three years later in 2015, making his claim that Finch was not a co-writer on the songs. However, that paperwork was not filed with the US Copyright Office as required. This would mean that - although Finch may have received royalties from those songs back in the day - he was never actually a co-owner of the copyrights, which means there was never an assignment of rights to terminate.įinch originally sent a notice of termination to Casey in 2012. However, it transpires, in the midst of all that Casey disputed that Finch was ever a co-writer on the songs. Under US copyright law, there is a termination right which says that, when a creator assigns their copyrights to another party, they have an opportunity to terminate that assignment and reclaim their rights after 35 years.įinch has been trying to exercise that termination right for a decade now, originally hoping that the old agreement would terminate in 2018. In a settlement deal agreed in 1983, Finch assigned all his rights - including his royalty rights and writer's share income - to Casey. Richard Finch, co-founder and bassist of classic disco-funk group, KC & the Sunshine Band, sued Sony Music-owned EMI Longitude Music in Los Angeles federal court on Friday, seeking a declaration. However, after the duo fell out in the early 1980s, Finch walked away from that joint venture. Former KC And The Sunshine Band member Richard Finch wants the US Supreme Court to intervene in a slightly complicated termination rights dispute also involving his former bandmate Harry Wayne Casey.Īmerica's top court is being asked to rule on how the termination right in US copyright law interacts with the statute of limitations for copyright claims, in this case disputed claims regarding authorship.įinch and Casey co-wrote many songs for their band in the 1970s and set up a joint venture publishing company to manage the rights in those works.
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