Welcome to Skilled in the Art. I’m Law.com IP reporter Scott Graham. When John Waite, Joe Ely and other musicians from my era filed would-be class actions this week to reclaim their copyrights, I had a bunch of questions: Why now? Can rock stars really be considered “employees” of their record labels? And why are the labels raising so many different defenses? I’ll lay out the dispute and provide one expert’s commentary below. As always you can email me your own thoughts and follow me on Twitter.

Photo: Matthew Straubmuller via Wikimedia Commons

Will Class Actions Ignite Musicians’ Copyright Battle?

Remember a couple of years ago when Paul McCartney sued Sony ATV Music Publishing in an attempt to reclaim copyrights in his Beatles recordings?