IP Law Daily, COPYRIGHT—6th Cir.: A George Clinton collaborator will get another chance at proving co-authorship, (May 28, 2026)

By Matthew Hersh, J.D.

The songwriter and musician had a legitimate claim on the merits and did not wait too long to bring his claim.

A federal district court erred when it found that a prominent member of a popular 1970s funk band waited too long to claim his share of ownership over some of the group’s sound recordings, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has held. The court, in re-activating the latest of a long string of disputes between the songwriter’s estate and bandleader George Clinton, also found that the songwriter had a valid claim that he was a co-author of the works in question (Estate Of George Bernard Worrell, Jr. v. Thang, Inc., No. 25-1863 (6th Cir. May 27, 2026)).

The lawsuit involves two of the musicians behind the pioneering funk groups Parliament and Funkadelic (collectively Parliament-Funkadelic or simply “P-Funk” to their many fans). Although George Clinton was the undisputed ringleader of P-Funk, many other musicians have been credited with making outsized contributions over the years to the group’s sound and style. One of those was Bernie Worrell, Jr., a bassist and vocalist who worked with Clinton and his bands from 1969 to 1981.

Worrell and Clinton tangled frequently over royalty issues during and after their musical collaboration—leading perhaps inevitably to litigation. After Worrell’s death in 2016, his estate brought a New York state court lawsuit again Clinton’s company, Thang Inc., for breach of contract. The lawsuit was based on a 1976 agreement in which Worrell ostensibly granted Thang full ownership of sound recordings that Worrell worked on, in exchange for royalties. But the estate’s effort to recoup its royalties under that contract hit a roadblock when the state court found that the 1976 contract had never been signed by Thang—thus making it invalid.

With contract claims dead-ended, Worrell’s estate then turned to copyright law. The estate’s lawsuit, which it brought in a Michigan federal district court, sought a declaration that Worrell was a co-owner of the sound recordings made when he was with the band as well as an accounting of the royalties owed. The district court granted summary judgment for Thang on the grounds that the estate waited too late to bring the claim. The estate appealed, leading to this opinion.

Statute of limitations. The court of appeals found that the district court erred in granting summary judgment to Thang. Under caselaw interpreting the Copyright Act, the court noted, a claim of ownership accrues whenever there is a “plain and express repudiation” of ownership by one party as against the other. Courts in the Sixth Circuit, the court noted, have recognized three circumstances that may constitute plain and express repudiation. The first and “most straightforward means of repudiating an ownership claim,” the court noted, “is a direct statement from one party to another claiming exclusive rights to the work.” Second, the court noted, a claim “may be repudiated if the work is published but the plaintiff is not appropriately credited.” Third, the court noted, “courts have found that a co-owner’s claim may be repudiated when she learns she is entitled to royalties she is not receiving.”

Under these principles, the court found, Worrell’s claim of ownership did not accrue until 2020—the year in which Clinton and Thang first asserted their position, in the earlier state court litigation, that the 1976 agreement was invalid for lack of signature. Had that agreement been validly executed, the court noted, Worrell’s claim to ownership of any recordings he participated in under the Agreement “would have been extinguished from the outset.” That is, the court noted, “under the 1976 Agreement copyright ownership is what he intended to give up in exchange for his right to royalties.” But according to the New York Supreme Court, the court noted, Thang never executed the 1976 Agreement. “This means that Worrell could in fact possess ownership rights if he was a coauthor of P-Funk’s recordings,” the court reasoned.

Nor did it matter, the court found, that Clinton and Thang failed to give Worrell authorship credit at the time the recordings at issue were released. The district court correctly noted, the court of appeals observed, that failure to give authorship credit had been found sufficient to put an author on notice of the repudiation of his claim in other cases. But here, the court noted, the facts were entirely different because at the time that Clinton and Thang failed to give that credit, Worrell believed that the 1976 agreement was in effect. Under these circumstances, where the estate claims that Thang and Clinton “acted for years as though Worrell had voluntarily transferred his ownership rights,” the court emphasized, “there remains a genuine dispute of material fact regarding whether Clinton and Thang plainly and expressly repudiated Worrell’s status as a co-owner.”

But while this might wind up being “the rare case in which a copyright-ownership claim may be brought a half-century after-the-fact,” the court noted, the reversal of the district court’s ruling could not encompass the ownership claim in its entirety. Although the estate claimed co-ownership of P-Funk recordings created between 1969 and 1981, the court noted, the 1976 agreement could have affected at most ownership of recordings made under the agreement’s express scope, which covered only the period between January 1, 1976 and January 1, 1979. Thus, for recordings made outside of the scope of the 1976 Agreement, the court noted, Worrell “cannot point to why he could have reasonably believed that Clinton and Thang were permitted to take advantage of his co-ownership in those recordings.” The claim as to those sound recordings, therefore, came too late.

Co-ownership. The court also refused to affirm the summary judgment ruling on the alternative issue of co-ownership. Clinton and Thang argued that Worrell couldn’t show he was a co-author because his contributions to the band’s sound were not, in themselves, independently copyrightable. But this argument rested on a flawed legal reading of the joint authorship rule, the court of appeals found.

The court began with some background of the joint authorship rule and its interpretation in the courts. Under the Copyright Act, the court noted, a “joint work” is “a work prepared by two or more authors with the intention that their contributions be merged into inseparable or interdependent parts of a unitary whole.” It is the first prong, authorship, that has engendered the most debate. In the landmark case of Childress v. Taylor, 945 F.2d 500 (2d Cir. 1991), the Second Circuit held that in order to qualify as an “author,” and thus potentially a “joint” author, the creator in question “must make independently copyrightable contributions” to the work. But while this standard might make sense when it comes to relatively straightforward works such as books or song lyrics, the court noted, it was less workable in the context of joint works flowing from complex and interactive creative processes. Thus, the court noted, many other courts of appeals—and even the Second Circuit itself—have since fallen back on a more lenient standard that inquired whether the putative co-author had contributed “some non-trivial amount of creative, original, or intellectual expression to the work.”

Under that standard, the court of appeals found, Worrell’s authorship claim had merit. Even if Worrell’s contributions to P-Funk’s discography were not independently copyrightable, the court noted, the estate could move forward on the claim if it showed that Worrell contributed substantial original expression to the work—“which it has provided in spades,“ the court emphasized. Indeed, the court noted, Clinton himself admitted that Worrell “radically charted the course of emerging keyboard technology during the golden age of analog synthesis” and that he brought to the table a “sonic stew” including “perfect pitch and a well-honed facility with a classical canon.” Moreover, Clinton admitted, Worrell “provided P-Funk with the structural foundation, which while occasionally implied, was ever-present.” These statements, the court noted, “contradict any suggestion that Worrell was just a session player or hired hand.” Much to the contrary, the court emphasized, “Worrell’s musical prowess and creativity were, according to Clinton himself, a distinctive and irreplaceable element of P-Funk’s sound. Thus, the court reasoned, there was a “genuine dispute of material fact as to co-ownership.”

Worrell also tendered sufficient evidence to create a genuine dispute over whether Clinton and Worrell intended themselves to be co-authors. Clinton viewed Worrell as a founding member and “Musical Director” of P-Funk, the court found, and also gave him “key decisionmaking power throughout the creative process, arranging the music before mixing, mastering, and overdubbing the recordings.” Worrell was therefore “unlike a musician-for-hire who might, despite meaningful contributions to a performance, lack the intent to be regarded as an ‘author of a work,” the court found. Nor did it matter, the court found, that Worrell believed he had assigned his rights to Clinton and Thang in the 1976 agreement. Clinton’s argument on this point “misses the mark by fudging the distinction between intent to be a co-author and intent to be a co-owner.” Indeed, if anything, the court noted, “the fact that Worrell thought he had signed away ownership indicates that he did intend to be a co-author with the capacity to exchange his co-ownership rights for valuable royalties.”

The Case is No. 25-1863.

Judge: Moore, K.

Attorneys: Richard S. Busch (King & Ballow) for Estate of George Bernard Worrell, Jr. Erik W. Scharf (The Scharf Appellate Group) for Thang, Inc.

Companies: Thang, Inc.

MainStory: TopStory Copyright KentuckyNews MichiganNews OhioNews TennesseeNews GCNNews