Copyright Termination Rights Under Section 203

By Hank FasthoffJuly 4, 2026

An author who assigns a copyright or grants an exclusive license often does so early in the work's life, before the work's value is known. For example, a songwriter signs a publishing deal for a modest advance, or a novelist assigns all rights to a publisher for a royalty that seems reasonable at the time, or a recording artist transfers rights to a label in exchange for a record deal. Years later, the work may be worth far more than anyone anticipated, and the author has no bargaining power to renegotiate because those rights have been assigned to a third party.

Congress addressed this problem in Section 203 of the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 203, by giving authors a non-waivable right to terminate grants of copyright and reclaim their rights during a five-year window that opens 35 years after the grant was executed. Section 203 exists because of the unequal bargaining position authors face and the impossibility of determining a work's value before it has been exploited.

Which Grants Are Terminable

Section 203 applies to any exclusive or nonexclusive grant of a transfer or license of copyright or of any right under a copyright, executed by the author on or after January 1, 1978, other than by will. It covers assignments, exclusive licenses, and nonexclusive licenses alike.

Two categories of grants are excluded. First, grants of rights in works made for hire aren't terminable under Section 203, because the employer or commissioning party, not the individual creator, is the statutory author of a work for hire. If the work was created within the scope of employment or under a valid work-for-hire agreement, the creator never owned the copyright and has nothing to terminate. Second, grants made by will aren't subject to termination.

For grants executed before January 1, 1978, separate termination provisions apply. Section 304(c) permits termination of pre-1978 grants during a five-year window beginning 56 years after the copyright was originally secured. Section 304(d) adds a second five-year window, beginning 75 years after the copyright was originally secured, for grants where the Section 304(c) right expired unexercised before the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act took effect. The mechanics differ from Section 203, but the underlying principle is the same.

The 35-Year Window

Termination may be effected during a five-year window that begins at the end of 35 years from the date the grant was executed. For grants covering the right of publication, the window begins at the earlier of 35 years after publication under the grant or 40 years after execution of the grant.

For example, a grant executed on March 15, 1990, becomes terminable beginning on March 15, 2025, and the five-year window runs through March 14, 2030. If nobody terminates within that window, the right is permanently lost. Section 203(b)(6) provides that unless and until termination is effected, the grant continues for the full remaining term of the copyright.

Notice Requirements

Termination requires advance written notice served on the grantee or the grantee's successor in title. Under Section 203(a)(4), the notice must be served not less than two and not more than 10 years before the effective date of termination stated in the notice.

For example, if the author wants the termination to become effective on January 1, 2027, the notice must be served between January 1, 2017, and January 1, 2025. A notice served too early or too late is ineffective. A notice that fails to comply with the form, content, and manner of service prescribed by the Register of Copyrights is ineffective. A copy of the notice must be recorded in the Copyright Office before the effective date of termination, and recordation is a condition of the termination taking effect.

Because the notice requirements are strict and a misstep can invalidate the termination entirely, authors should consult with a copyright attorney well before the earliest date for serving notice. Calculating the correct window, identifying the proper grantee (who may be a successor or assignee of the original grantee), and complying with the Copyright Office's regulatory requirements all require precision.

Who Can Terminate

If the author is alive, the author alone may exercise the termination right. If the author is deceased, the right passes to the author's surviving spouse, children, and grandchildren in specified proportions under Section 203(a)(2). The surviving spouse owns the author's entire termination interest unless children or grandchildren survive, in which case the spouse owns half and the children and grandchildren divide the other half per stirpes. Termination may be effected by those who own and are entitled to exercise more than half of the author's termination interest. If no spouse, children, or grandchildren survive, Section 203(a)(2)(D) provides that the right passes to the author's executor, administrator, personal representative, or trustee.

For grants executed by two or more authors of a joint work, termination may be effected by a majority of the authors who executed the grant. If any of those authors is deceased, the deceased author's termination interest may be exercised as a unit by the persons entitled to it under Section 203(a)(2).

Whether the majority requirement applies at all depends on how the grant was structured. In Scorpio Music S.A. v. Willis, No. 11-cv-1557, 2012 WL 1598043 (S.D. Cal. May 7, 2012), the Southern District of California held that a joint author who separately transfers his copyright interest may unilaterally terminate that grant. Victor Willis, the original lead singer of the Village People, served a notice of termination covering 33 compositions he co-authored, including "Y.M.C.A." and "In the Navy." His publishers sued, arguing that a majority of all the joint authors who had transferred interests in the works was required to terminate any one of those grants. The court rejected that reading, reasoning that requiring a majority of all joint authors to undo a grant that one author made alone would make it harder to terminate an individual grant than it was to make it in the first place. Where two or more joint authors join in a single grant, however, a majority of those authors is still needed to terminate it.

The distinction determines who has to sign the notice, and it's the difference between a valid termination and a void one.

The Right Can't Be Waived by Contract

Section 203(a)(5) provides that termination may be effected "notwithstanding any agreement to the contrary, including an agreement to make a will or to make any future grant." An author can't waive the termination right in the original assignment or license agreement. A contract clause stating that the author agrees not to exercise termination rights is unenforceable.

Similarly, an author can't agree in advance to grant rights that will vest after termination. Under Section 203(b)(4), a further grant of any right covered by a terminated grant is valid only if it's made after the effective date of the termination. One exception applies in the nature of a right of first refusal, under which the original grantee may negotiate a new agreement with the terminating parties, but only after the notice of termination has been served.

Federal courts have also rejected attempts to retroactively classify works as works made for hire after creation to avoid termination. Because works made for hire are excluded from Section 203, grantees sometimes argue that the works at issue were made for hire even when no work-for-hire agreement existed at the time of creation. Courts have treated such arguments as attempts to circumvent the statutory termination right, and will examine whether a work-for-hire relationship existed in fact when the work was created.

The protection against waiver by contract has limits, though, as the discussion of the 2 Live Crew litigation below shows. A termination interest that can't be signed away in a contract can still pass out of the author's hands by operation of law.

Effect of Termination

Upon the effective date of a valid termination, all rights under the Copyright Act that were covered by the terminated grant revert to the author or the persons owning termination interests. The reversion follows from the termination itself and requires no further action, though getting to that point requires everything described above to be done correctly. Once the rights revert, the author or heirs are free to exploit the works directly, license them to a new grantee, or negotiate a new agreement with the original grantee on different terms.

Section 203 doesn't prevent the parties from voluntarily terminating an existing grant at any time and negotiating a new agreement, which resets the 35-year clock. This mechanism provides grantees with an incentive to renegotiate before the window opens rather than waiting for the author to exercise termination.

The Derivative Works Exception

Section 203(b)(1) provides that a derivative work prepared under authority of the grant before its termination may continue to be exploited under the terms of the grant after termination. This privilege doesn't extend to the preparation of new derivative works based on the copyrighted work after the termination date.

For example, a film studio that acquired the rights to a novel and produced a motion picture under the original grant may continue to distribute and exploit that film after the author terminates the grant. But the studio may not produce a sequel, a remake, or any other new derivative work based on the novel after termination, unless it obtains a new grant from the author.

For the music industry, the derivative works exception means that a recording made under an original grant can continue to be exploited after termination, but the label can't create new remixes, compilations, or other derivative works from the master recordings without a new license. For publishers, it means that a translation or adaptation produced before termination can continue in print, but new editions or adaptations require a new agreement.

The Music Industry Termination Wave

Because Section 203 applies to grants executed on or after January 1, 1978, the first termination rights vested in 2013, 35 years after the statute's effective date. Since then, recording artists and songwriters have filed termination notices at an increasing pace, seeking to reclaim rights in master recordings and compositions that were assigned to labels and publishers decades ago.

The 2 Live Crew litigation shows how much can turn on the procedural details. The group's four members granted the sound recording copyrights in five albums recorded between 1986 and 1989 to their label. In 2020, Luther Campbell, Mark Ross, and the heirs of Christopher Wong Won served a termination notice on Lil' Joe Records, which had acquired the catalog. The fourth member, David Hobbs, didn't join. Because the four members had granted jointly, Section 203 required a majority, meaning three of the four, to sign a valid notice. A jury found for the group in 2024, rejecting the label's argument that the recordings were works made for hire.

The Eleventh Circuit reversed. In Lil' Joe Records, Inc. v. Won, No. 24-13978 (11th Cir. June 2, 2026), the court held that Ross's termination interests were property of his bankruptcy estate under 11 U.S.C. § 541(a)(1), notwithstanding the Copyright Act's restrictions on alienating the termination right. Ross had filed a Chapter 7 bankruptcy in which those interests were never scheduled, administered, or formally abandoned, and under 11 U.S.C. § 554(c) and (d), unscheduled property remains property of the estate. Because the estate still held the interests when Ross signed, his signature was ineffective, which left only two of four members supporting the termination, one short of the required majority. The court was careful to limit its holding, declining to decide how termination interests should be treated in bankruptcy generally, and declining to decide what Ross's heirs might do to exercise those interests in light of the bankruptcy.

The decision is a caution for authors and their counsel. Section 203(a)(5) blocks a contractual waiver of the termination right, but it doesn't stop the right from passing into a bankruptcy estate by operation of law and staying there when nobody accounts for it. An author with a bankruptcy anywhere in his history should treat the termination analysis as a bankruptcy question as well as a copyright question.

As agreements from the late 1980s and 1990s enter the termination window, disputes over Section 203 are increasing. Labels and publishers frequently challenge termination notices on the grounds that the works were made for hire, that the notice was procedurally defective, or that the terminating party has misidentified the grant or lacks authority to sign it. Authors and heirs who fail to serve timely and compliant notices lose the termination right permanently.

Practical Implications

For authors and their heirs, Section 203 provides a second opportunity to negotiate from a position of knowledge rather than speculation. An author who assigned a copyright for $5,000 in 1990 and watched it generate millions in revenue can reclaim the rights and renegotiate or find a new licensee. But exercising the right requires advance planning, precise calculation of the termination window, and strict compliance with the notice requirements.

For grantees, Section 203 introduces a 35-year horizon on every copyright acquisition that isn't structured as a work made for hire. Grantees should evaluate whether a work-for-hire structure (where the statutory requirements can be met) is preferable to an assignment, and should track the termination windows for significant copyrights in their catalogs. Proactive renegotiation before the termination window opens may preserve valuable rights on better terms than waiting for a termination notice to arrive.

For both sides, no amount of drafting can eliminate the termination right. A carefully worded clause purporting to waive it is unenforceable, and a renegotiated agreement resets the clock without removing the right. What drafting can't do, procedure sometimes can, since a termination fails if the notice is late, defective, or signed by too few of the right people. Section 203 can't be contracted around, and both authors and acquirers must plan accordingly.