Are you the widow, widower, or the child of a deceased songwriter or recording artist?

The Copyright Act has rights that you might not have heard about.

If the author of a work is not living at the time that it is possible to send a termination notice, the Copyright Act specifies that specific persons get to sign and send the termination notice to record companies and to music publishing companies.

The important point to understand is that the Copyright Act is federal law, which is superior to state law. In other words, sometimes a person arranges his or her estate a certain way, or prepared a will, specifying that certain family members may share in the Estate, and others do not. But this makes no difference; federal law controls.

Although § 203 and § 304(c) are fairly short statutes, they set forth some fairly complicated rules as to who gets to sign a notice, how many people must sign it, etc.

Or, perhaps the deceased songwriter or recording artist was a brother or sister, or a more distant relative.

But suffice it to say that if you are in this category, please contact us and we will tell you what the rules are, with regard to your particular situation.