Grammy-winning rap duo Salt-N-Pepa have filed an opening appellate brief in their fight with Universal Music Group over the copyrights to their master recordings.
The 71-page filing, submitted to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on March 31 and obtained by MBW, lays out the duo’s case for why Judge Denise Cote’s January dismissal of their lawsuit should be reversed.
The filing follows the duo’s notice of appeal, which was filed in February and reported by MBW at the time.
The case centers on whether the duo’s 1986 recording agreements constitute a transfer of copyright that can be terminated under Section 203 of the Copyright Act — the provision that allows artists to reclaim rights they granted to labels 35 years after the original deal.
Cheryl James and Sandra Denton — collectively Salt-N-Pepa — signed their first recording agreement in May 1986 with Noise In The Attic Productions (NITA), a company owned by their then-producer Hurby Azor. On the same day, NITA entered into a distribution deal with Next Plateau Records, a predecessor to UMG. Salt-N-Pepa also signed an inducement letter attached to that deal.
Judge Cote ruled in January that 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.”
Salt-N-Pepa’s appellate brief, filed by attorney Richard S. Busch of Nashville-based King & Ballow, argues the district court applied the wrong legal standard when analyzing whether the duo had transferred their copyrights.
The brief, which you can read in full here, states that the court “created a new requirement out of whole cloth” by asking whether Salt-N-Pepa had expressly “asserted their ownership of the copyrights” within the agreements. Under the Copyright Act, the brief argues, copyrights vest automatically in an author once a work is fixed in a tangible form. No formal assertion is needed.
“Salt-N-Pepa have no such requirement under the law to ‘assert their ownership’ of the copyrights,” the filing states.
The brief points to language in the NITA agreement’s preamble — which refers to Salt-N-Pepa “granting” NITA “certain exclusive rights with respect to Artist pertaining to audio-visual exploitation” — as clear evidence of a copyright transfer that the district court overlooked.
It also argues the inducement letter Salt-N-Pepa signed contained a direct grant to Next Plateau Records, in which the duo agreed to “grant you all of the rights and remedies therein granted to you.”
Whether the recordings are works made for hire is also central to the case: if they are, the label — not the artists — is considered the legal author under the Copyright Act, and there are no rights for Salt-N-Pepa to terminate.
The filing contends that while the district court claimed not to reach this question, it implicitly did so — noting that the court cited copyright registrations listing UMG’s predecessors as “employer for hire” to support its reasoning. The brief notes that neither of the 1986 agreements even contains the phrase “made for hire.”
Salt-N-Pepa’s catalog — which includes hits such as Push It and Whatta Man — generated approximately $1 million in royalties in just five months before the lawsuit was filed, according to the brief. The duo’s early recordings remain unavailable to stream in the United States after UMG removed them from platforms in 2024.
Allowing the lower court’s ruling to stand, the filing argues, is “tantamount to continuing the cycle of allowing judicial decisions to contravene Congress’s stated intent to provide safeguards to artists.”
The brief also makes a fallback argument: even if the Second Circuit does not find the agreements clearly constitute a copyright transfer, Salt-N-Pepa argue the contract language is at least ambiguous. The brief also notes that under Second Circuit precedent, ambiguous contracts cannot be resolved on a motion to dismiss — meaning the case would need to proceed to allow Salt-N-Pepa to build a factual record.
Salt-N-Pepa are asking the Second Circuit to reverse the dismissal and send the case back for further proceedings.
“While we are gratified that the court dismissed this baseless lawsuit, it should never have been brought in the first place.”
UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP
After the dismissal in January, a Universal Music Group spokesperson said: “While we are gratified that the court dismissed this baseless lawsuit, it should never have been brought in the first place.
“Prior to this suit – and without any legal obligation to do so – we made multiple attempts to resolve the matter amicably, improve the artists’ compensation, and ensure that Salt-N-Pepa’s fans had access to their music.
“Even with the court’s complete rejection of their claims, we remain open and willing to find a resolution to the matter and turn the page so we can focus our efforts on working together to amplify Salt-N-Pepa’s legacy for generations to come.”Music Business Worldwide
