The Supreme Court was unable to consider a petition to review a copyright case after a rare lack of quorum due to four justices recusing themselves from evaluating the petition.
The high court announced in an order list that because they lacked a quorum in BMG Rights Management v. Vetter, the lower court’s ruling would be affirmed as if the justices never took up the case, the same way that a deadlock at the Supreme Court would affirm a lower court’s ruling. The case dealt with whether, when copyright reverts to authors or their heirs under U.S. law, that applies only to the U.S. copyright or to copyright worldwide. The dispute between major music labels and artists led to a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which found that the reversion of copyright applies to the worldwide copyright, not just copyright in the United States. Because of the lack of quorum, the 5th Circuit’s ruling will stand.
