Cher wins lawsuit against Sonny Bono’s widow

 

Cher has won her lawsuit against Sonny Bono’s widow over royalties to “I Got You Babe” and other hits after a federal judge ruled that Mary Bono must continue paying the superstar her cut under the couple’s decades-old divorce settlement.

More than 20 years after Sonny’s death, Mary argued that she no longer needed to pay royalties to Cher thanks to copyright law’s so-called termination right — a provision of federal law that allows songwriters and their heirs to win back control of their intellectual property rights decades after they gave them away.

But in a decision issued Wednesday (May 29), Judge John A. Kronstadt ruled that the federal termination rules do not trump Sonny and Cher’s 1978 divorce settlement, which gave the singer a permanent 50% cut of the publishing revenue from songs written before the couple split up.

The ruling means that Cher will continue to receive publishing royalties for her catalog of songs created with Sonny, including “The Beat Goes On” and “Baby Don’t Go.” According to Wednesday’s ruling, more than $400,000 in royalties owed to Cher have piled up since the dispute began.

In a statement to Billboard on the ruling, Mary Bono’s attorney Daniel J. Schacht praised the judge for confirming that his client now owns Sonny’s copyrights, but said the judge “got the law wrong on copyright terminations.”

“His ruling, if left standing, would hurt songwriters and creators by allowing not just former spouses, but also publishers and labels, to circumvent the Copyright Act and keep shares of royalties even after terminations,” Schact said.

An attorney for Cher did not return a request for comment from Billboard.

Sonny and Cher started performing together in 1964 and married in 1967, rising to fame with major hits like “I Got You Babe,” “The Beat Goes On” and “Baby Don’t Go.” But the pair split up in 1974, finalizing their divorce with a settlement in 1978. Under that deal, Sonny retained ownership of their music rights, but Cher was granted a half-share of all publishing royalties in perpetuity.

That agreement stayed in effect for years, including after Bono died in a 1998 skiing accident. But in 2016, Mary and other heirs invoked the termination right, seeking to take back control of Sonny’s copyrights from his publishers. And in 2021, they informed Cher that they would soon stop paying royalties under the earlier agreement.

Cher quickly sued, seeking a ruling that she was still owed her 50% cut regardless of who owns the copyrights since a federal copyright provision had no bearing on a state-law asset settlement. Mary fired back a few months later, claiming that termination rights could not be waived by contract and that Cher’s arguments would “subvert” the purpose of the law.

In Wednesday’s ruling, Judge Kronstadt sided with Cher’s arguments. He ruled that the divorce settlement with Sonny gave Cher a “contractual right to receive financial compensation,” rather than the kind of control over his copyrights that could be voided using the termination right: “A right to receive royalties is distinct from a grant of copyright,” the judge wrote.

Mary can appeal the ruling to a federal appeals court, potentially reprising her argument that the ruling for Cher would undermine the goal of Congress to allow creators to regain control of the revenue from their copyrighted works.

In his statement to Billboard on Wednesday, her attorney Schact said that regardless of how the case plays out, Mary and Cher would continue to work “collaboratively and respectfully” in order to “uphold and honor Sonny’s musical legacy.”

–

www.billboard.com