When Michael died in 2009. In 2016, Sony acquired the Michael Jackson estate’s 50% share of Sony/ATV, making it a wholly owned Sony company. Now Sony is dropping the ATV part of the name. They own the Beatles catalog, The goose that lays the golden egg now belongs to Sony.
The singer-songwriter hopes to regain his copyrights to songs such as "Yesterday," "Hey Jude" and "The Long and Winding Road" in October 2018. A rep for McCartney said that the paperwork, filed in a U.S. District Court in New York, is meant "to confirm his ownership" of the songs "which are granted to him by US copyright law." The lawsuit claims McCartney has been making several such legal filings since 2008.
The former Beatle is seeking a "declaratory judgment," according to The Hollywood Reporter, to ensure the transfer will not be prolonged. He's also seeking a ruling that the publishing agreements are unlawful and unenforceable against McCartney, attorneys' fees and any other fees the court feels is just.
Now that McCartney and Sony/ATV have resolved this issue themselves, copyright watchers won't have the satisfaction of knowing how a stateside court would rule in this case.
"The parties have resolved this matter by entering into a confidential settlement agreement and jointly request that the Court enter the enclosed proposed order dismissing the above-referenced action without prejudice," writes McCartney attorney Michael Jacobs in a Thursday letter to U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos.
"Sony/ATV has the highest respect for Sir Paul McCartney with whom we have enjoyed a long and mutually rewarding relationship with respect to the treasured Lennon and McCartney song catalog," a rep for the publishing company tells Rolling Stone. "We have collaborated closely with both Sir Paul and the late John Lennon's Estate for decades to protect, preserve and promote the catalog's long-term value. We are disappointed that they have filed this lawsuit which we believe is both unnecessary and premature."
McCartney is hoping that a U.S. court will rule in his favor ahead of a U.K. court; Duran Duran had filed a similar suit last year with a Sony/ATV subsidiary and an English court ruled that American law came second to those of Great Britain. By filing the suit in the U.S., McCartney's legal team hopes that U.S. Copyright law and its statutory termination rules – the point at which the copyright reverts back to the writer – would take precedence over any contracts in the U.K.
McCartney and John Lennon had assigned the rights to some of the songs, written between 1962 and 1971, to various publishers; by the Eighties, a number of the songs belonged to ATV. In late 1984, Australian billionaire Robert Holmes à Court put the songs up for sale. McCartney had spoken to his then-friend, Michael Jackson, about the lucrative business of owning songs and Jackson subsequently outbid his friend, taking ownership of the Beatles' catalogue for the price of $47.5 million.
Jackson later worked with Sony to form Sony/ATV. The book Michael Jackson, Inc. reports that as of 2014, Sony/ATV was worth $2 billion. Jackson's heirs owned half of the business until the estate sold its share to Sony
Now that McCartney and Sony/ATV have resolved this issue themselves, copyright watchers won’t have the satisfaction of knowing how a stateside court would rule in this case.
“The parties have resolved this matter by entering into a confidential settlement agreement and jointly request that the Court enter the enclosed proposed order dismissing the above-referenced action without prejudice,” writes McCartney attorney Michael Jacobs in a Thursday letter to U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos.
The details of the deal are unclear, but the order specifies that the New York federal court will “enforce the terms of the parties’ Settlement Agreement, should a dispute arise.”
