'Authoring While Dead' (Stanford Public Law Working Paper) by Mark A Lemley and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr comments
Bob Marley died in 1981. But he wrote a song in 2017 with The Killers. At least, that’s what the song credits say. Why? Because The Killers’ song included the two words “redemption songs,” the title of a classic Bob Marley hit. Rather than fight, The Killers agreed to add Marley as a co-author.
There is an increasing trend in the music industry toward resolving disputes over music copyright by granting co-authorship (or “interpolation”) credit to the claimant, no matter how weak the claim (as in Marley’s case), and even if they are dead (as in Marley’s case). Bob Marley and the Killers are not alone. Olivia Rodrigo agreed to add Paramore as a co-author despite the absence of any plausible copyright claim. Sam Smith did the same with Tom Petty. So did Beyonce. They are all identified as co-authors of the songs they (generally falsely) alleged were infringing.
But they aren’t and can’t be authors under copyright law. Even if the copyright cases have merit – and they generally don’t – that would make the defendant an infringer, but it wouldn’t make the plaintiff a joint author. Instead, the deal for co-authorship credit appears to be a form of trolling. Under most music contracts it gives the complaining party an undeserved share of the royalties. If that was all it did, we might put up with it. After all, the parties agreed to it for whatever reason. But permitting retroactive co-authorship claims does harm to others and to the system as a whole. It creates problems for later understanding of authorship, for termination rights, and is a form of rights accretion that Jim Gibson warns us about. There is reason to worry that it will lead to a statutory interpolation right– a right to be credited for, get money for, and eventually to control songs that don’t infringe in the first place.
The subsequent version in Georgia Law Review gives lead authorship to the late lamented Holmes.
