Let's Talk About Copyrights: Salt-N-Pepa suit over ownership of master recordings dismissed
Sandra Denton and Cheryl James of the hip-hop group Salt-N-Pepa at the “Space Jam: A New Legacy” movie premiere at the Microsoft Theater on July 12, 2021, in Los Angeles. (Photo from Shutterstock)
Hip-hop group Salt-N-Pepa’s case against UMG Recordings was dismissed Thursday by a New York federal judge who said relevant agreements between the parties fail to show that the rap icons ever owned the copyrights for several of the group's most popular songs.
In the May lawsuit filed by Cheryl James and Sandra Denton—the group’s singers—they allege that UMG Recordings retained a copyright grant that allowed the company to exploit their master recordings and retain a portion of all funds.
UMG Recordings moved to have the case dismissed in August, noting that when Salt-N-Pepa’s former producers entered distribution agreements with UMG Recordings’ predecessors, James and Denton were not signatories, according to coverage by Law360.
U.S. District Judge Denise Cote of the Southern District of New York said, “The 1986 agreements do not indicate that plaintiffs ever owned the copyrights to the sound recordings or that they granted a transfer of those rights to anyone else.”
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