He Didn’t Infringe Anything. That Didn’t Stop the Accusations.

I’ve been an entertainment lawyer for 27 years, and I’ve seen a lot . A lot. I’ve Seen This Before is my Friday series that gives you a peek at some of the lessons my clients have learned the hard way. Some of the details may have been changed to protect client confidentiality.

A songwriter hired me after receiving a threat no songwriter ever wants to hear. Someone was threatening to sue him over one of his biggest songs. The allegation? Copyright infringement.

The strange part was that my client hadn't copied anyone's music. He had done what songwriters do every day. He had walked into a writing session with other songwriters. Together, they wrote a new song. The song caught on. It became popular.

And, as frequently happens, popularity generated money, and money generated the threat of a lawsuit.

A Songwriter From the Past Came Back

As it turned out, one of my client’s co-writers had another collaboration years earlier. During that earlier collaboration, the co-writer and his colleagues had written a different song together.

The accusation on the table was that my client’s co-writer had reused a portion of that earlier song. Not the entire song. Just a piece of it. The former collaborators heard the new hit and supposedly recognized a piece of their old collaboration.

Suddenly Everyone Was a Defendant

The former collaborators didn't just threaten the songwriter who had allegedly reused the material. They threatened everyone—the co-writer, my client, the other writers in the session. The publishers. The record company. Anyone connected to the new song.

From the old collaborators’ perspective, part of a song they owned had appeared in a completely different work without their permission. That's a serious allegation.

My client had done nothing wrong. Yet he suddenly found himself in the middle of a dispute that would be expensive, time consuming, and exhausting.

The Question Became: Who Had the Right to Reuse the Song?

The answer required looking beyond copyright law and into partnership law. When two or more people write a song together, they generally become co-owners of that copyright unless they agree otherwise. That changes things. In this particular case, the co-owner had the right to use (and license to my client) a song he owned. It also meant he couldn’t commit an infringement of his own work. If there were similarities (the co-writer denied that there were, but I never got far enough into the dispute to find out), that co-writer would have had to share his portion of the profits with his collaborators, but he couldn’t be accused of infringement. And that meant neither could anyone he gave permission to use that work to.

That principle became critically important, because my client's co-writer wasn't copying someone else's work. He was supposedly reusing material from a song he co-owned.

You Still Have to Deal With the Dispute

The fact that my client’s co-writer owned the material he supposedly inserted in the song meant there was no infringement, and I was able to pull my client out of the dispute early. But here's what people often overlook: Being right doesn't prevent the threat. My client still had to hire a lawyer. He still had to answer the accusations. He still had to spend time, money, and energy dealing with a problem he hadn’t created.

Being right didn't remove the headache. It just made it more frustrating.

The Lesson Isn't What You Think

This story isn't really about copyright law; it's about collaboration. When you write with someone else, you're also relying on them. You're trusting that the ideas they're contributing are theirs to contribute. You are trusting that they have the authority to use what they bring into the room. Most of the time, that trust is well placed. Sometimes, collaborating means you are inheriting other people’s problems.

The Real Lesson

Songwriting collaboration is extremely common, particularly in Nashville. Two people can walk into a room with nothing and leave with something neither could have created alone.

But collaboration also means sharing risk. Sometimes that risk has nothing to do with your own actions. It comes from what someone else brought into the room. So what do you do to protect yourself? Have an agreement. Make representations that the material is original. Require an indemnity. Do something to make sure that someone else’s problems don’t become your problems.

My client didn't intentionally copy anyone. He simply trusted his co-writer. And that trust almost pulled him into a copyright lawsuit.

Before you sign any deal, download the free Artist Contract Survival Checklist and learn the questions every artist should ask before committing to any kind of music deal.