However, I did want to mention how cool it is that Bruce Springsteen has his own radio show, From His House To Yours on Sirius XM. I have several things I really want to delve into and hope to get them up soon. We're lucky to be living in the same time as you. It doesn't look as if the court has ruled on the. I wonder if he had a similar arrangement with Sam Shepard? I will say that I agree with Dylan's attorneys that the complaint is without merit – the contract clearly gave Dylan the right to assign the copyrights and the deal doesn’t disturb Levy’s continued income stream. Oddly, Dylan's Motion to Dismiss the claim, which was filed in March, refers to the work-made-for-hire arrangement as "standard." Maybe these deals made more sense back in 1975.
It seems so foreign to any traditional notion of co-writing – although the history of the music business is full of examples of artists and performers making "unique" deals with their collaborators – this one is fairly new to me. The complaint goes on to list a litany of complaints against Dylan and his associates, but I remain most fascinated by the whole work-made-for-hire concept.
Even more surprising is the fact that the contract specified that Levy would receive only 35 percent of the writer’s share of income from the songs, rather than the traditional 50/50 co-writer's share. What intrigued me is that Dylan's co-writing arrangement with Levy was a "work made for hire" agreement where Dylan not only owned Levy's share of the copyright, but that for copyright purposes, Levy was Dylan's employee – with no ability to ever recapture his share of the copyright. None of that is surprising contractual disputes occur all the time. Shortly thereafter, on January 20, 2021, Claudia Levy, the widow of songwriter/psychoanalyst/theater director Jacques Levy, filed suit against Dylan and Universal for breach of contract, alleging that the Levy estate was somehow due some part of the proceeds that Dylan received from the sale because of the fact that Levy co-wrote ten songs with Dylan, including the majority of the songs on Desire ("Isis" is a personal favorite). Late last year, it was announced that Bob Dylan had sold his catalog (including the writer's share of income) to Universal Music Publishing Group for approximately $300 million, one of the highlights in the recent frenzy of catalog acquisitions. It's Bob Dylan's 80 th birthday, and I wanted to mark the occasion by reviewing the complaint in one of the strangest lawsuits I have seen in some time.