![]() If so, Collins ruled that the termination attempt “could not constitute claims against Charles’ estate and therefore could not have breached the agreement between Charles and Defendants.”īut that doesn’t end things in the complicated ruling. If Charles’s songs were not made for hire, and he owned them when he died, the judge says that the “Copyright Act prevents the Court from interpreting the agreements signed by Defendants as limiting their statutory termination rights” - in other words, when Ray Charles gathered his children and gave them $500,000 and no more, the agreement couldn’t include a waiver against termination because that would be something known in legal parlance as an “agreement to the contrary,” which some past courts in California have ruled is unenforceable so far as termination attempts go.Īnd if Charles actually did work for Atlantic/Progressive and didn’t own his songs at any point? The foundation wavered on the issue, so the judge addressed both possibilities. Again, that goes to the issue of whether the songs are eligible to be terminated in the first place. Collins gave a few reasons why the foundation won’t likely succeed.Ī key issue in the possibility of termination is whether or not Charles’ songs were written as works made for hire and whether he was employed by Atlantic Records and Progressive Music Publishing at the time he composed them. ( Read the ruling in full here.)Īs such, for the lawsuit to go further, it was the foundation’s burden to prove it had a likelihood of prevailing in the case. District Court Judge Audrey Collins‘ ruling last week is that the anti-SLAPP statutes - which give recourse to defendants dragged into litigation that interferes with First Amendment rights - applies to a termination notice because it is “certainly more than simply ministerial and involves more than just a private business transaction,” according to the judge. The first bit of precedent coming from U.S. In reaction to the lawsuit, the children, represented by attorney Marc Toberoff, brought an anti-SLAPP motion, urging the court to reject the claims. ![]() Further, the foundation sought a declaration that the termination notices were invalid. Years later, when the children attempted to grab back rights to Charles’ songs under the termination clauses of copyright law, the foundation sued, alleging that the children had breached their agreements with their father. When he died in 2004, Charles left most of his estate to the Ray Charles Foundation, a charity that supports the vision- or hearing-impaired.Īs for Charles’ children, before he died, the singer gathered most of them (two were in jail) and told them that they each would be given an irrevocable trust for $500,000 - and that’s all they’d get. That brings our attention to a ruling made Friday by a California federal judge concerning a termination attempt on many of Ray Charles‘ famous songs including “I Got a Woman,” “A Fool for You” and “Mary Ann.”Ĭharles’ 12 children have just survived the first big challenge in their termination attempt. If a musician is deemed as having been employed by the publisher, then the songs originally belonged to the publisher, and no right to terminate exists. There are still potential roadblocks including the possibility that record labels and song publishers will challenge terminations as improper because the songs were made-for-hire.
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