American music publisher Bourne Co., co-founded in 1919 by songwriter Irving Berlin, has initiated a copyright dispute before the New York Supreme County Court against UK-based Boosey & Co. Ltd. The suit alleges a conspiracy to deprive Bourne Co. of its share of rights in the song “These Foolish Things”, written by Eric Maschwitz and Jack Strachey.<\/p>\n
Released in 1936, “These Foolish Things” was recorded by numerous artists including Billie Holiday, Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, and Frank Sinatra. The cover version by Billie Holiday reached No. 5 on the Billboard Pop Songs chart. The plaintiff, Marco Berrocal \u2014 successor in interest to Irving Berlin Inc. \u2014 claims that an Agreement dated April 28, 1936 granted Bourne Co. the publishing and licensing rights over the song in the United States, Canada, and Newfoundland for the copyright term of the song in the United States, in exchange for accounting and royalty collections.<\/p>\n
The plaint alleges that Boosey & Co., on learning that Eric Maschwitz’s rights over the song would legally revert to his heirs, negotiated a contract with the Maschwitz family whereby the heirs’ rights were assigned to Lafleur Music Limited and Boosey & Hawkes Inc., both sister companies of Boosey & Co. Bourne Co. was subsequently informed in 2014 that Boosey & Co. would no longer provide it rights to one-half of the composition, on the ground that such rights had purportedly been lost by Boosey & Co.<\/p>\n
The plaintiff contends that Boosey & Co. violated the 1936 Agreement by intentionally relinquishing and transferring 50 per cent of the rights in the song to its sister companies, with the aim of divesting Bourne Co. of its share of Maschwitz’s rights before the end of the copyright term. The suit further alleges that Boosey & Co. threatened to strip Bourne Co. of all its rights in the song after Bourne Co. exercised its right to withhold royalty payments to Boosey & Co. on account of the alleged breach.<\/p>\n
The plaintiff is seeking damages of USD 3 million, together with an amount equal to the monies earned by Boosey & Co. and its subsidiaries from the song since the alleged assignment of rights.<\/p>\n
This article is for general information and does not constitute legal advice. Readers should consult a qualified attorney before acting on any matter discussed here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This post analyses the legal dispute between Bourne Co and Boosey & Co over the copyright and publishing rights to ‘These Foolish Things.’ The case highlights complex issues in music copyright agreements and the consequences of contractual breaches in the publishing industry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":36,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[12898,7225,6249,93,7229,7224,7228,7227],"class_list":["post-25637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-copyrights","category-intellectual-property","tag-boosey-and-co","tag-bourne-co","tag-copyright-dispute","tag-copyright-law","tag-music-litigation","tag-music-publishers","tag-publishing-agreement","tag-song-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25637"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":149815,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25637\/revisions\/149815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}