Description:

Dwayne Michael Carter, Jr. (better known as Lil Wayne) and his label Young Money Entertainment sue Cash Money Records in the Southern District of New York. Wayne alleges that Cash Money breached his recording contract by failing to pay millions of dollars in royalties for delivering the "Tha Carter V" album to the label, failing to pay royalties on records on Wayne's Young Money label (including Drake's), prohibiting him from auditing the label's books, and registering the copyright in Wayne's sound recordings in the label's name alone. Mark's notes: This is not a copyright infringement action. The claims are under New York State law, not the United States Copyright Act. The action is in federal court, instead of state court, based on diversity jurisdiction, which means that the parties reside in different states. The failure to credit Lil Wayne with co-ownership of the sound recording could have implications on his bottom line. For instance, rights collection agencies like SoundExchange designate 50% of streaming royalties for Rights Holders. This means that, if only the record label and not Lil Wayne is designated a Rights Holder, Lil Wayne is missing out on his share - 25% of the royalties collected for his recordings. Wayne would also have difficulty suing for copyright infringement of his own recordings if the Copyright Office does not recognize him as the owner. Keep in mind that these are the copyrights to the sound recordings, and not the compositions. Although it is common practice for recording artists to assign copyright in sound recordings to their record labels, they typically do not assign the copyrights in the compositions (or grant rights to publishers). For informational purposes only. Not legal advice. I am not representing parties in this action. For more information about my practice, see: https://torekeland.com/about/mark-h-jaffe And legal nuggets about copyright, trademark, music and other things on twitter @MarkJKings https://twitter.com/MarkJKings