Paul McCartney sues Sony to regain ownership of Beatles songs

J.G. Taruc

January 19, 2017

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  Photo credit: Hollywood Reporter

  Paul McCartney has filed a federal lawsuit against music publisher Sony/ATV, claiming rights to songs he wrote with the Beatles according to the Rolling Stone.

  The former Beatle member is seeking a “declaratory judgement” to ensure the transfer will not be prolonged. McCartney hopes that he can regain his copyrights to some of the Beatles song such as ‘Yesterday’, ‘Hey Jude’ and ‘The Long and Winding Road’ in October 2018.

  A representative from McCartney’s camp said that the paper filed in a U.S. District Court in New York, is mean to confirm his ownership of the songs which are granted to him by US copyright law.

  The singer’s legal team is citing the 1976 Copyright Act that says that the rights to works made before 1978 must be returned to their original creators 56 years after the date of the original copyright; 2018 will be 56 years since Lennon and McCartney first starting writing songs together in 1962.

  McCartney and John Lennon had assigned the rights to some of the songs, written between 1962 and 1971, to various publishers; by the Eighties, a number of the songs belonged to ATV. In late 1984, Australian billionaire Robert Holmes à Court put the songs up for sale. McCartney had spoken to his then-friend, Michael Jackson, about the lucrative business of owning songs and Jackson subsequently outbid his friend, taking ownership of the Beatles’ catalogue for the price of $47.5 million.

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