Sony/ATV Publishing LLC
address this issue and, of course, was decided before the 1992 amendments. RMMI II remanded to the district court on the very issue of Sony's ownership interest in the 1964 songs and thus did not rule on that issue. 477 F.3d at 395.
4. RMMI’s Position Is Inconsistent with the Statute
If Congress intended to condition all assignments on the author's survival to the start of the renewal term, it would not have split § 304(a)(2)(B) into two subparagraphs; ownership in all cases would be determined “as of the last day of the original term of copyright,” 17 U.S.C. § 304(a)(2)(B)(ii). Under this interpretation, the “at the time the application is made” language in § 304(a)(2)(B)(i) would be meaningless. In accordance with the rules of statutory construction, however, we “must ‘giv[e] effect to each word’” and do not interpret a statute in a way that renders a provision “‘meaningless or superfluous.’” Nat'l Air Traffic Controllers Ass'n v. Sec'y of Dep’t of Transp., 654 F.3d 654, 657 (6th Cir. 2011) (quoting Menuskin v. Williams, 145 F.3d 755, 768 (6th Cir. 1998)). Instead, the two subparagraphs articulate different rules for two different sets of circumstances; only if no application is filed is ownership determined “as of the last day of the original term of copyright.”
RMMI's reading of § 304(a)(2)(B)(i) as a provision that “simply freezes the eligible statutory successors so that the only successors who may be entitled to the renewal interest on the first day of the renewal period are those who qualified as statutory successors at the time the application was filed,” Appellee Br. at 9, finds no support in caselaw or commentary. More damning is RMMI's failure to explain why the then-living Roger Miller would not be included in the closed class of statutory successors. A living author is the first person entitled to the renewal copyright under § 304(a)(1)(C). If the class closes at the time of application, and the author is alive at the time of application, then the author is included within the closed class and the copyright vests in him at the start of the renewal term. The renewal copyright passes to the author's assignee, even if the author has died in between the filing of the application and the renewal term. By describing § 304(a)(1)(C) as “expressly limited to the author's
