A Music Business Worldwide op-ed by Reed Smith LLP lawyers Nick Breen and Joshua Love examines the fallout from Vetter v. Resnik, a January 2026 Fifth Circuit ruling that a songwriter's US statutory termination can recapture worldwide, not just American, copyright rights. The authors argue that while the decision is a potentially transformative win for songwriters and their heirs, actually enforcing worldwide ownership abroad could prove far harder than winning the case, since foreign courts, collecting societies and subpublishers often treat copyright as fundamentally territorial and may not automatically follow a US court's ruling.

Major publishers have petitioned the US Supreme Court to overturn the ruling, in a case now called BMG Rights Management (US) LLC v. Vetter, warning it is "every bit as disruptive as it sounds." The RIAA, NMPA and A2IM say the effects are already being felt, with authors sending supplemental termination notices seeking foreign rights and extra compensation. The authors note that a songwriter could win a declaration of worldwide ownership in a US court yet spend years trying to get that recognised on royalty statements territory by territory, partly because the UK has no direct equivalent of the US statutory termination mechanism.