IP Law Daily, COPYRIGHT—D.P.R.: No second bite at the apple for Latin American music publisher, (Dec 4, 2025)

By Matthew Hersh, J.D.

Long-running dispute with Puerto Rican musician is precluded by earlier action.

A music publisher that specializes in Latin American compositions could not relitigate the issue of whether it owned the rights to ten poems that were adapted by a Puerto Rican musician, the federal court for Puerto Rico has held. The court, in dismissing the music publisher’s counterclaim in the latest of a long-running series of legal battles between the two parties, found that the issue of ownership had already been litigated in an earlier lawsuit and there was no reason why the matter should be reopened in the current case (Brown v. Latin American Music Co., Inc., No. 24-01523-MAJ, (D.P.R. Dec. 1, 2025)).

The lawsuit was brought by Roy Brown, a musician and songwriter who claims ownership of 12 songs adapted to poems written by Puerto Rican poet Juan Antonio Corretjer. Brown’s complaint alleges that the Latin American Music Company, a Puerto Rico-based music publisher, infringed upon Brown’s copyrights to the works by falsely claiming ownership of them with—and therefore collecting royalties from—the licensing entity that collects music composition royalties from those who exploit those compositions under a statutory license. The music publisher, in turn, filed a counterclaim alleging that it, not Brown, owned the rights to the 12 underlying Corretjer poems (plus a 13th not mentioned in Brown’s complaint)—and therefore it was Brown, not the music publisher, who committed copyright infringement by exploiting his adaptions of those poems.

The two complaints led to a matching pair of motions to dismiss. In October of this year, the court dismissed Brown’s lawsuit, finding that even if Brown’s allegations were true, the music publisher could not have committed copyright infringement by the mere act of falsely registering ownership with the licensing collective. Meanwhile, Brown moved to dismiss the music publisher’s lawsuit, leading to this opinion.

Res judicata. The court first found that the music publisher’s lawsuit was not barred by the doctrine of res judicata (also known as claim preclusion). The current lawsuit, the court noted, is not the first time that Brown and the music publisher have tangled in the courts. In 2005, Brown filed a declaratory judgment action against the music publisher seeking a declaration that he did not infringe upon the music publisher’s rights to the Corretjer poems. The music publisher counterclaimed for copyright infringement based on Brown’s use of ten songs adapted from Corretjer poems. The district court granted summary judgment to Brown on the music publisher’s counterclaim, and the First Circuit affirmed. Was the music publisher’s counterclaim over those ten songs barred by the doctrine of res judicata? The district court found that it was not.

The res judicata doctrine did not apply here, the court found, because the music publisher based its new counterclaim on Brown’s continuing exploitation, after the filing of the complaint in the earlier case, of the ten songs at issue. Claim preclusion, the court noted, “generally does not bar claims that are predicated on events that postdate the filing of the initial complaint.” Moreover, the court emphasized, that principle was “especially relevant in the context of actions for copyright infringement, as it is widely recognized that the separate-accrual rule attends the copyright statute of limitations.” Because each wrong gives rise to a discrete claim that “accrues at the time the wrong occurs,” the court concluded, “all acts of copyright infringement post-dating the prior litigation may not be precluded because they constitute separate and distinct causes of action.” The res judicata doctrine would therefore not bar the music publisher’s counterclaim.

Collateral estoppel. But while the doctrine of res judicata would not bar the counterclaim, the court found, the doctrine of collateral estoppel—or issue preclusion—would be fatal to it. The doctrine of issue preclusion, the court emphasized, “bars parties from re-litigating issues of either fact or law that were adjudicated in an earlier proceeding.” Here, the court reasoned, the music publisher had already litigated the precise question at issue here, namely whether it owned the rights to the ten underlying Corretjer poems. What’s more, the court noted, the music publisher had tried to assert ownership over some of the same works in yet another case, from 2011—and the court in that case had found that the claim was barred by collateral estoppel by the 2005 proceeding as well. Having lost the issue of ownership on the merits previously, and having lost on the collateral estoppel issue previously as well, the court found the publisher could not get yet another “bite at the apple” now.

Nor did the music publisher raise any new evidence in the current lawsuit that it could not have used in the earlier proceeding. The only new evidence that the music publisher tendered, the court found, was a certificate of registration issued by the Copyright Office in 2008 that recorded the music publisher’s alleged interest in the poems. But the music publisher argued, the court emphasized, that it had obtained the rights to the works in 1999. The music publisher “never explains why a certificate of registration created 8 years after it allegedly purchased the Corretjer works—and decades after they were originally published—constitutes a significant change to the controlling facts,” the court found. Thus, while the music publisher could continue to litigate its ownership of the three additional works not covered by the original action, it could not move forward over the other ten.

Attorneys: Patricia Rivera-MacMurray (Hernandez Mayoral Law Office) for Roy Brown. Benjamin Halperin (Abrahams & Sheppard LLP) for Latin American Music Co., Inc.

Companies: Latin American Music Co., Inc.

Cases: Copyright TechnologyInternet PuertoRicoNews