After performing-rights organizations ASCAP and BMI both lost royalty rate challenges against background music provider DMX Inc. in 2010, they turned to a pair of former U.S. solicitors general to handle their appeals: Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher’s Theodore Olson for ASCAP and Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr’s Seth Waxman for BMI. But all that appellate firepower wasn’t enough to turn their fortunes around.
On June 13, DMX and its own big-gun litigator, Weil, Gotshal & Manges partner R. Bruce Rich, persuaded the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to affirm the lower court decisions in the consolidated appeal, which stemmed from separate suits filed by ASCAP and BMI in June 2006. The ruling, Rich told affiliate Litigation Daily, “should benefit lots of other major industries and users of music collectives like ASCAP or BMI.”
