From: dpyle50@gmail.com   
      
   cut and pasted this from an ER link:   
      
   Bob Dylan is seeking to dismiss litigation filed by the estate of former   
   collaborator Jacques Levy, which claims it is due a cut of the reported $300   
   million Dylan secured last year when he sold his songs catalogue to Universal.   
   Not so, Dylan’s lawyers    
   responded in a new legal filing last week. Levy collaborated with Dylan on a   
   work-for-hire basis, so – while he enjoyed a royalty right over the songs he   
   co-wrote – he did not have a stake in any of the copyrights.   
      
   The estate of Jacques Levy sued both Dylan and Universal Music Publishing back   
   in January following last year’s headline-grabbing catalogue acquisition   
   deal.   
      
   It argued that while Levy did have what was officially a work-for-hire   
   agreement with Dylan when he collaborated on songs that appeared on the 1976   
   album ‘Desire’, the terms of that deal went beyond industry standards.   
   That meant that the estate had    
   a rightful claim to a cut of the monies Universal paid to acquire Dylan’s   
   catalogue, it reckoned.   
      
   Under US law, work-for-hire agreements allow an employer to become the default   
   owner of any copyrights created by an employee under the deal, even if the   
   employer/employee relationship is pretty informal. That means that Dylan owned   
   the copyright    
   outright in his collaborations with Levy, although the agreement nevertheless   
   provided his collaborator with some of the controls and benefits that usually   
   come with being the copyright owner.   
      
   In fact, the Levy estate argued, the agreement provided so many controls and   
   benefits that it’s misleading to even call it a work-for-hire deal. “The   
   agreement’s terms make clear that the agreement is highly atypical of a   
   work-for-hire agreement”,   
    the Levy estate’s lawsuit noted, “bestowing on plaintiffs considerable   
   significant material rights and material benefits that are not customarily   
   granted to employees-for-hire”. So much so, it added, “the label   
   ‘work-for-hire’ is, in this    
   instance, a misnomer”.   
      
   To that end, the Levy estate lawsuit went on, the 35% revenue share element of   
   that 1970s agreement should also apply to the monies Dylan received from   
   Universal last year. The lawyers then did some basic maths, reckoning that the   
   Universal deal paid    
   Dylan $500,000 per song, and that the estate should receive 35% of the half a   
   million dollars paid for each of the songs on which Levy was a co-writer.   
      
   However, in the new legal filing last week, lawyers for Dylan and Universal   
   argue that, while Levy’s work-for-hire agreement may have been unusually   
   generous, it doesn’t stop it being a work-for-hire agreement. And that,   
   therefore, makes the Levy    
   estate’s claims really easy to disprove. The estate’s lawsuit, Dylan’s   
   attorneys state, “is an opportunistic attempt to rewrite a 45-year-old   
   contract to obtain a windfall payment that the contract does not allow”.   
      
   The 1970s deal, they go on, “is a standard work-for-hire agreement between   
   Dylan and Levy. It grants Dylan full ownership of the copyrights in the ten   
   songs on which the two collaborated, making the songs Dylan’s ‘sole   
   property’ and giving him    
   the exclusive right to sell the copyrights”.   
      
   “The agreement designates Levy as the ’employee’ and specifies his   
   compensation as 35% of the royalty payments from Dylan’s licensing of the   
   songs for things like TV commercials or performance on the radio”, they add.   
   “Nothing in the    
   agreement remotely suggests that the parties agreed to bestow on Levy the   
   windfall plaintiffs demand here”.   
      
   Moreover, the legal filing then notes, although last year’s deal saw Dylan   
   give up all his rights in his songs catalogue, that doesn’t affect any   
   collaborators due royalties under old work-for-hire agreements. Universal is   
   aware of those old deals    
   and is taking on those royalty commitments. Therefore the Levy estate, unlike   
   Dylan himself, will continue to earn royalties when the ‘Desire’ songs are   
   exploited.   
      
   “In exchange for a lump-sum payment, Dylan gave up ‘all of [his] rights   
   with respect to every song in [his] catalogue’, including all future   
   licensing income he would have received as the owner”, last week’s legal   
   filing confirms. “As a    
   result, Dylan no longer owns the copyrights or has any right to royalties from   
   their exploitation”.   
      
   However, “Dylan ensured that plaintiffs retained their rights to future   
   royalty income. As plaintiffs concede, Universal knew that its purchase of   
   Dylan’s catalogue came with certain ‘obligations, inter alia, to account   
   and pay to plaintiffs [and    
   to other collaborators with royalty rights] all funds due pursuant to’   
   Dylan’s preexisting royalty arrangements with those collaborators”.   
      
   “Dylan thus extinguished his own rights in the songs at the same time he   
   made sure that plaintiffs’ right to compensation from future uses of the   
   songs was preserved”.   
      
   With all that in mind, the Dylan and Universal team conclude, the Levy   
   estate’s lawsuit should be dismissed with prejudice.   
      
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