Copyright termination is the author’s statutory right to take back a grant of copyright decades after signing it, regardless of what the contract says. Under 17 U.S.C. § 203, an author who transferred or licensed rights on or after January 1, 1978 can generally reclaim them in a five-year window beginning 35 years after the grant was executed. The right cannot be sold, waived, or contracted away, which makes it one of the few genuinely inalienable entitlements in American intellectual property law.
Congress built it into the 1976 Act on a simple premise: authors sign away rights early, when a song or a manuscript or a character is worth nothing and the bargaining power sits entirely on the other side of the table. Termination corrects that asymmetry, and it is deliberately mechanical rather than equitable. You do not have to show the deal was unfair. You have to hit the dates.
The operative language is in § 203(a)(5): termination may be effected “notwithstanding any agreement to the contrary, including an agreement to make a will or to make any future grant.” Section 304(c)(5) says the same for older grants. Congress understood that if the right were waivable, every publishing and recording contract in the country would waive it on page one and the protection would evaporate.
So termination litigation almost never argues about the waiver clause, because the waiver clause loses. It argues about whether § 203 applies to the grant at all, which is why work made for hire status is among the most heavily litigated questions in entertainment law.
Section 203(a)(3) sets two possible starting points, and choosing the wrong one is a common way to blow a termination:
Note the word “earlier.” The two branches are not alternatives you pick between; the statute picks for you, and it picks the date that comes first.
Termination is also not automatic when the window opens. It is a right you exercise, and if the five years close without a valid notice taking effect, the grant stands for the remainder of the copyright term.
Section 203(a)(4) requires a written notice, signed by the terminating parties, stating the effective date of termination. That date must fall inside the five-year window, and the notice must be served on the grantee or the grantee’s successor not less than 2 and not more than 10 years before that effective date. A copy must be recorded with the Copyright Office before the effective date, and recordation is a condition of the termination taking effect, not a formality.
The Copyright Office’s regulations at 37 C.F.R. § 201.10 govern the contents: the works, the grant, the effective date, and enough identifying detail to make the notice findable. Because the earliest legal moment to serve is 10 years before the effective date, an author whose 35-year mark is approaching may already be too late to reach the front of the window.
Termination is not a time machine. Section 203(b)(1) provides that a derivative work prepared under the authority of the grant before termination may continue to be utilized under that grant’s terms. The film made from the novel keeps running. The recording made from the composition keeps selling. What terminates is the right to make anything new.
The Supreme Court read this exception broadly in Mills Music, Inc. v. Snyder, 469 U.S. 153 (1985), a § 304(c) case in which a songwriter’s heirs terminated a publisher’s grant and then argued they should collect the full record-label royalties on recordings already made under it. The Court held the publisher stayed in the chain and kept its share, because those recordings were made “under the authority of the grant” and the grant’s terms included the publisher’s cut. The lesson generalizes: terminating authors recover less of the existing revenue stream than they expect, and recover the forward-looking rights they actually wanted.
Section 203(b)(4) adds a wrinkle with commercial teeth. A new grant of a terminated right is valid only if made after the effective date, with one exception: a deal with the original grantee can be signed any time after the notice is served. The former publisher is therefore the only counterparty allowed to negotiate during the notice period, which is why so many terminations end in a renegotiated deal with the same company rather than a departure.
Section 203(a) applies to grants “executed by the author.” A work made for hire has no author in the ordinary sense: under § 201(b) the employer or commissioning party is the author from the moment of creation. There was never an authorial grant to undo, so there is nothing to terminate.
That makes work made for hire the whole ballgame. In Horror Inc. v. Miller, 15 F.4th 232 (2d Cir. 2021), the screenwriter of Friday the 13th served a § 203 notice on a 1979 flat-deal contract. The production company’s successor argued he had been an employee, pointing to his Writers Guild membership and the collective bargaining agreement. The Second Circuit held that copyright law, not labor law, defines “employee” here, applied the common-law agency factors from Community for Creative Non-Violence v. Reid, 490 U.S. 730 (1989), and found Miller an independent contractor. His termination stood.
Note the second gate: a commissioned work is a work made for hire only if it falls within one of the nine enumerated categories in § 101 and the parties signed a written instrument saying so. Sound recordings are conspicuously absent from that list, which is the structural reason the recording industry’s termination exposure is so large.
Grants executed before January 1, 1978 run on § 304(c), not § 203. The window there is five years beginning 56 years from the date copyright was originally secured, or beginning January 1, 1978, whichever is later. When the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act added 20 years to the term in 1998, Congress added § 304(d) to give a second chance to authors whose § 304(c) window had already closed unused, opening a five-year window at 75 years. Section 304 also reaches grants made by an author’s statutory heirs, which § 203 does not.
Where several people signed, arithmetic controls. Under § 203(a)(1), a grant executed by two or more joint authors is terminated by a majority of the authors who executed it. But in Scorpio Music (Black Scorpio) S.A. v. Willis, No. 11-cv-1557 (S.D. Cal. May 7, 2012), Victor Willis of the Village People had signed separate agreements covering his own interest in songs including “Y.M.C.A.” The court held that a joint author who separately granted his interest may terminate that grant unilaterally, because the majority rule attaches to the grant, not to the work. Where the author has died, § 203(a)(2) vests the termination interest in the widow or widower, children, and grandchildren by statutory shares, and owners of more than half of that interest must act together.
One caution the music industry learned expensively: § 203 is United States law, and a foreign court applying foreign contract law may not care. When members of Duran Duran served US termination notices, an English court held in Gloucester Place Music Ltd v. Le Bon (2016) that doing so breached their English-law publishing agreements. The right survives the contract inside the United States. The contract may still bite elsewhere.
What is copyright termination under section 203? Section 203 of the Copyright Act gives authors a statutory right to take back a copyright grant they signed on or after January 1, 1978, generally 35 years after the grant was executed. It applies notwithstanding any agreement to the contrary, so a contract cannot waive it. The author must serve and record a written notice between 2 and 10 years before the effective date, and works made for hire are excluded.
When can I terminate a copyright grant? For a post-1978 grant, the window is five years beginning 35 years after the grant was executed. If the grant covers the right of publication, the window instead begins at the earlier of 40 years from execution or 35 years from publication. Pre-1978 grants run on a different clock under section 304, generally 56 years from when copyright was first secured, with a second 75-year window under section 304(d).
Can a contract waive copyright termination rights? No. Sections 203(a)(5) and 304(c)(5) say termination may be effected notwithstanding any agreement to the contrary, including an agreement to make a will or to make a future grant. That is why the fight is almost never about the waiver clause and almost always about whether the work was a work made for hire, which is carved out of the statute entirely.
Why are works made for hire excluded from termination? Termination exists to give authors a second chance at a bargain they struck before the work’s value was known. A work made for hire has no author in the human sense: the employer or commissioning party is the author from the moment of creation, so there is no earlier grant to undo. This is why cases like Horror Inc. v. Miller turn entirely on employee status rather than on the contract language.
Going further: Licensing Your Creative Work, a practical walkthrough .
This page is general legal information, not legal advice, and it does not create an attorney-client relationship.
The Ninth Circuit held a 1978 re-grant of Lassie rights did not extinguish the heir's Section 304(c) right to terminate her earlier 1976 assignment.
The Second Circuit held that a 1994 deal superseding Steinbeck's 1938 grant left no pre-1978 grant to terminate, defeating his heirs' Section 304(d) notice.
The Second Circuit's 'Friday the 13th' ruling held that screenwriter Victor Miller was an independent contractor, not an employee, letting his § 203 termination notice stand and reclaiming the screenplay.
When an author's heirs terminate a publisher's copyright grant, who collects on the records already licensed? The Supreme Court split 5-4 and let the publisher keep its cut.
The Second Circuit held that Jack Kirby's foundational 1958-1963 comics were works made for hire under the 1909 Act's 'instance and expense' test, defeating his children's § 304(c) termination notices.
The Supreme Court held that when an author dies before the copyright renewal term vests, his heirs' renewal rights defeat a prior grant to make and exploit a derivative work like Rear Window.
A Southern District of New York court let recording artists pursue § 203 termination of their master recordings but refused to certify a class, holding the work-for-hire defense too individualized to resolve collectively.
A Southern District of California ruling held that a co-author of 'Y.M.C.A.' who separately granted away his share could terminate that grant alone, without his co-writers' consent.
