The forthcoming (July 2025) new Warner Brothers / DC Superman movie from director James Gunn is having trouble with territories and we can learn something useful about music rights from its issues.
Jospeh Shuster and Jerome Siegel were Superman's co-creators. They assigned the worldwide rights to the character to DC Comic's predecessor, Detective Comics.
However, in the same way as music is a copyrightable piece of intellectual property that is owned by its creator(s) - or whoever inherits or buys their rights - and that ownership can be and is often argued over, there has been a long history of legal fights between Shuster, Siegel, their estates, DC and Warner Brothers over the ownership of the 'Man of Steel' character.
The latest instalment is litigation by the estate of Shuster, seeking monetary damages and a 'cease and desist' order seeking to block Superman from being depicted without "a license to do so". They have timed it such that even if the final ruling goes against them, the launch of the Superman film in July could be damaged, presumably to add a financial incentive for Warner Brothers to pay up.
Warner Brothers, of course, strongly disagree with Shuster's estate, believing that they are fully entitled to exploit the character and release the movie as they please, and are in the process of vigorously defending their rights.
So far, so familiar. What's interesting about this one, though, is that the case only affects some countries in the world, and not others. Due to some legal 'small print', Shuster's estate says that the film can open in the US, but not in the UK, Canada, Australia, and certain other countries.
When dealing with music, you also have to take account of rights on a very granular, country-by-country, basis.
This is because owners of the music recording, typically record labels, and the owner of each publishing share in the music and lyrics of the song that was recorded (which regular readers will know can get very fragmented and complicated), can and do authorise different companies in different countries to represent their interests. And this can change on a regular basis.
So licensing the rights for each country can be likened to putting together a jigsaw puzzle of the rights needed from each owner. And different people can keep taking their pieces away, so you have to constantly check every piece that you are relying on is still there. And you have to do this for each country where you want to use the music.
If you are just using music in a single country, then you have to do just one jigsaw puzzle. For each country in which you want to use and license the music, you need to do the jigsaw puzzle for that country.
So athletes competing at the top end of their sports in international competitions need to license music for their home country, in which they train for their routine, and then each other country in which they will perform that routine.
Don't get tangled in territories like Superman...
When you license music from ClicknClear, we ask you to specify each country that you need to license for.
This makes sure we can solve the necessary 'jigsaw puzzles' for you when you first license the music.
Our licenses are priced per country, with a cap of 3x the single country price giving you as many countries as you wish.
If you find you need to add a country later, for example, you find out towards the end of a season that you are competing in a competition overseas, you can add a single country to your license for 6 months (for 50% of the single country price).
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