Duran Duran and British/American Copyright

The band Duran Duran, known for such hits as "Hungry Like the Wolf" has sought to reclaim in the United States the publishing copyrights on over three dozen songs.  According to CMU:

The Duran Duran case tested whether the reversion right meant that songwriters who assigned their copyrights to music publishers outside the US could still automatically reclaim control of their songs within America after 35 years.  

The U.S. publisher of their music is Gloucester Place Music, which is controlled by Sony/ATV.  CMU notes that Gloucester Place Music  has "insisted that their 1980s publishing contract, governed by English law, didn’t allow any such reversion."

Duran Duran

In December 2016, British judge Richard Arnold rules that the publishing agreement “would have conveyed to a reasonable person… that the parties’ intention was that the ‘entire copyrights’ in the compositions should vest, and remain vested, in the claimant for the ‘full term’ of the copyrights”.  Or in other words, the 35-year rule in U.S. copyright law does not apply.

On February 3, 2017, Duran Duran noted that they are being allowed to appeal the decision, although no date has been set for that to occur.

The "Termination of transfers and licenses granted by the author" is explained in Title 17, Section 203. There is also a useful document on the Copyright Office web site, which gives an explanation of this Section. 

I have not kept up on what this band is doing and so was surprised to hear about this court case from my students.  Based on a quick Amazon search, a number of books have recently been published on the band and it seems that their popularity and productivity has not diminished.  Kudos to them to also be thinking about the rights to their music and how to gain control of their works!