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After the ùremasterû approach is clearly defined, it will be forwarded

to the Intellectual Property Law practitioners for consideration, whether digital
remaster creates new copyright or on the other hand whether a creator of

remaster piece possesses copyright of a work remastered.

Back in 2016, a lower court ruled that a remastering introduces

substantially new elements into the recording, making it a brand new work.
That argument was cleverly posited by CBS Radio, which is fending off a

lawsuit alleging that it should pay royalties for pre-1972 recordings.

The question of whether state laws about pre-1972 sound recordings

could give copyright holders a claim against broadcasters for the over-the-air

public performance of these recordings was answered in a novel manner in

a decision rendered by a US District Court in California. The evidence before
the Court showed that CBS, the broadcaster being sued, had played digitally

remastered versions of the pre-1972 songs, not the original analog pre-1972

recordings. The Court, based on evidence provided by the sound engineers
who remastered the digital versions of the songs, found that there was enough

originality in the remastering process for the digital versions to be

copyrightable as çderivative works.é To clarify, a derivative work is a separate

work, based on the original, which can itself be copyrighted if there is some

creativity in the new work. As the remastered derivative work was created
after 1972, the Court decided that it was covered under Federal law. As

Federal law provides no royalty for the public performance of a sound recording

by an over-the-air broadcaster, the Court granted CBS summary judgement
in the suit brought against it, dismissing the claims of the copyright holders

the question of whether digitized versions of old recordings are sufficiently

creative to merit their own copyrights (whether they are çoriginal works of

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