The Louisiana-born “Double Shot (Of My Baby’s Love)” co-writer Vetter just recently laid out his opposition arguments across 37 detailed pages, after the majors (and BMG) in June petitioned the nation’s highest court.

As we exclusively broke down then, the filing parties, having tagged out original litigant Resnik Music Group by purchasing its purported “Double Shot” interest, took aim at a Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decision issued in January 2026.

(In Team Vetter’s own words, the majors and BMG “purchased Resnik’s interest in this litigation solely to manufacture an opportunity to file a petition for certiorari.”)

Without retreading too much ground here, the Fifth Circuit affirmed a district court ruling indicating that copyright terminations and recaptures cover both stateside and international rights. Evidently, the finding didn’t sit right with the majors and BMG – hence their decision to step in for Resnik.

Enter Vetter’s firmly worded opposition, which begins by claiming that the Fifth Circuit’s determination, contrary to the majors’ arguments, doesn’t represent an emergency requiring Supreme Court intervention, doesn’t upend decades of precedent, and aligns with the way industry agreements are trending in any event.

“Petitioners try to depict this case as some sort of copyright emergency that cannot await further percolation. But publishers are doing just fine and will continue to thrive even if some of them have slightly less bargaining power with which to deprive authors of a fair return when their works become wildly successful.

“At least in the music industry, the Fifth Circuit’s decision actually reflects modern industry practice. In the streaming era, publishers have shifted dramatically toward licensing agreements that return to the authors all rights to their songs and recordings after 10-20 years, without regard to geography and without any need to invoke statutory termination,” the legal text reads.

Meanwhile, the Fifth Circuit didn’t contradict existing recapture decisions – “no other circuit and only one other district court has ever addressed the question presented” – and the matter should play out before the Supreme Court steps in, per Vetter.

Next, even if the Supreme Court does wish “to decide the termination question without the benefit of percolation in the circuits,” the current “case is not a suitable vehicle.”

Put briefly, that Vetter possesses half the worldwide rights to “Double Shot,” purchased from co-writer Don Smith’s estate under the provisions of the 1909 Copyright Act, isn’t challenged. Thus, the Supreme Court’s siding with the petitioner majors wouldn’t solve the wider global ownership issue.

“Even if Petitioners prevailed on the merits under § 304, that would do nothing but give them shared ownership with Vetter over any foreign copyright rights,” a relevant section sums up. “As co-owners, they could not unilaterally control Double Shot, despite their claim that they need such control to facilitate future licensing, and, indeed, to preserve the global copyright infrastructure.”

“Under their theory, if a U.S. author terminates the grant of (and recaptures) her U.S. copyright, every Berne signatory must still independently decide, under its own choice-of-law rules, whether to recognize that author as the party entitled to enforce the copyright within its own territory,” the opposition spells out.

A court in the United Kingdom, for instance, “could conclude that U.K. law does not recognize U.S.-style termination and that the publisher remains the party entitled to enforce the copyright there.

“Conflicting results would remain precisely because there is no extraterritorial reach. That would result in a morass of competing ownership claims across jurisdictions, muddled further by the fact that exploitation of copyrights (such as by posting a work on the internet) so often transcends geographic borders in this day and age,” the filing states towards its end.