john lennon publishing rights

[Brainwashed]

Does John's estate or Yoko own a pubishing company for John's solo Beatles songs?

[gfgb123]

Does John's estate or Yoko own a pubishing company for John's solo Beatles songs?

Good question. I'm pretty sure that from songs published from 1973 on belong to the Lennon Estate/Yoko. It's a bit questionable about what exactly is the nature of the songs from the "Plastic Ono Band", "Imagine" and "Sometime in NYC" albums. Both John Lennon and Paul McCartney separately renewed their links with ATV Music in 1973. Subsequently ATV Music acted as an administrator while Lennon and McCartney were the sole owner of the copyrights of songs written from 1973 on. It seems that one of the bargaining chips McCartney used was that for songs previously co-written with Linda previous in 1971 and 1972, McCartney Music (MPL) was become the sole owner of the copyright. Perhaps it didn't occur to him or ATV wouldn't budge, to include songs from "McCartney" and "Ram" which were solo compositions. So "Too Many People" and "Maybe I'm Amazed" are still part of the Northern Songs/ATV (currently Sony/ATV) copyrights.

I would presume that Lennon would have signed a similar deal ATV in 1973 but I notice that those songs from 1970-1972 either bear copyrights to either Ono Music, Lenono Music, or Sean Ono Lennon, Julian Lennon and Yoko Ono while the administrators are either Sony/ATV or EMI-Blackwood for songs during the same era. For a while BMG Music was the administrator for Lenono. It is currenly EMI-Blackwood. Whether Lennon negotiated a better deal with ATV to transfer ownership of the copyright of those songs from 1970-1972 or it was simply that after so many years after the author's death, the songs ownership falls to the author's heir or maybe Yoko renegotiated with either Sony/ATV/Jacko is unclear.

McCartney claims that after so many years, all the songs get transfered to author. There may be an exception with the Beatle songs because one of the deals in creating Northern Songs was for Lennon and McCartney to give up their copyright to Northern Songs (something they are still regretting, no doubt). Whether the Lennon Estate and McCartney get their copyrights back is a question for somebody more familiar with copyright laws and contracts to answer.

[nerktwin]

Yoko must control them because when "Imagine" is used, it is often said that Yoko let them have the rights to use it for xxx long- like she let "Amnesty International" and she lets children's choirs release them, etc.

But I know for a fact I read in an interview John talking about not owning any of his songs until the "Walls and Bridges" album- he must have gotten the ones before back at some point or she did.