Cher v. Bono appeal tests the line between royalties and copyright

The Cher-Mary Bono royalties dispute reaches the Ninth Circuit at a moment when the easy headline is already stale. Oral argument in Case No. 25-8085 is scheduled for July 23, 2026, according to the Justia docket; that date should be checked against the Ninth Circuit’s official calendar before publication because hearing calendars can move.[1] The question worth watching is not simply whether Cher keeps receiving money tied to Sonny Bono’s catalog. It is what kind of legal interest she had in the first place.

The public posture is familiar enough. Cher largely prevailed in the district court in late 2025, and Mary Bono said she would appeal.[2] Billboard likewise reported the appeal as a challenge to the loss in the royalties dispute.[3] Mary Bono’s appellate position, as reported, is that the district court got copyright termination law wrong. That is the live dispute, but it is only intelligible if the royalty stream is separated from the copyright interest that generated it.

A second ruling, issued just before argument, makes the case less tidy for anyone trying to cast it as a clean celebrity win. Judge Mark C. Scarsi denied Cher’s request for more than $1 million in legal fees, with Rolling Stone reporting the requested amount as $1,023,605.50.[4] The denial matters because it follows from the same classification that helped Cher on the merits: if she was enforcing a state-law contractual payment right rather than vindicating a copyright claim, Copyright Act fee shifting under §505 is a poor fit.

The right Cher enforced was not treated as Sonny Bono’s copyright

The district court’s decisive move was conceptual before it was monetary. Practitioner analyses of the ruling describe the court as distinguishing between ownership or transfer of copyright rights and a contractual entitlement to receive a share of royalties.[5][6][7] That distinction is not cosmetic. A copyright grant is the kind of federal interest that can be pulled into the termination provisions of the Copyright Act. A promise to pay someone part of the income derived from exploitation of works can remain a state-law obligation even when the income source is copyright-adjacent.

The marital settlement agreement sits at the center of that classification. The reported analyses frame Cher’s claim as one to enforce a divorce-derived contractual right to half of specified royalties, not as a claim that she retained or received Sonny Bono’s underlying copyright interests.[5][8] That is the part of the case that should interest lawyers drafting settlements for performers, songwriters, producers, and spouses who are dividing income streams rather than transferring title.

Calling the right a royalty right does not end the analysis by itself. A payment obligation can be drafted so closely to an assignment that a court has to examine what actually moved from one party to another. But the district court’s framework, as summarized by Loeb & Loeb, Finnegan, Copyright Lately, Forbes, and Earp Cohn, treated the relevant asset as a contractual claim to payments rather than as a federal copyright grant.[5][6][7][8][9] That is why the case belongs as much in a family-law drafting file as in an entertainment copyright file.

Why §304(c) depends on the classification

Section 304(c) gives authors or statutory successors a termination right for certain older copyright grants. In practical terms, it can let a later rights holder unwind a prior grant during a statutory window. The hard edge of the provision is that it operates on grants of copyright rights; it does not automatically erase every contract that mentions copyrighted works or every revenue-sharing obligation tied to a catalog.

Mary Bono’s theory, as reported in the appeal coverage and practitioner commentary, depends on bringing the divorce settlement interest within that federal termination frame.[3][5] If Cher’s entitlement is treated as part of a terminated copyright grant, the later termination could cut off the stream. If it is treated as a separate state-law promise to pay half of certain royalties, the termination of Sonny Bono’s copyright grants does not necessarily terminate the payment obligation.

That is why shorthand accounts of the case can mislead. The district court did not need to say that termination rights are weak, or that divorce settlements always defeat them, or that heirs cannot invoke §304(c) against entertainment-industry agreements. It identified the thing Cher was enforcing and found that thing outside the copyright grant that Mary Bono sought to terminate.[5][7]

There is also a timing complication that should restrain broad predictions. The marital settlement agreement was executed on Aug. 10, 1978, and the research materials flag an independent issue: §304(c) termination windows do not apply to post-Jan. 1, 1978 agreements.[5] That timing point narrows how much work the case can do for other disputes involving pre-1978 works, later settlements, or mixed chains of title.

The district court win carried a fee-shifting cost

The July 21 fee ruling is not an afterthought. It exposes the strategic price of the merits theory. Cher’s strongest position was that she was not asking the court to restore a copyright grant; she was enforcing a bargained-for payment term. But once the case is framed that way, §505 of the Copyright Act no longer supplies an obvious path to attorney-fee recovery.

Rolling Stone reported that Judge Scarsi denied Cher’s motion for more than $1 million in legal fees after her royalties victory.[4] MusicTimes, reporting the next day, described the result similarly and gave the royalty award as $418,156.82, while Rolling Stone’s earlier coverage used the less precise formulation “over $400,000.”[10][2] The exact award figure should be cross-checked against the final judgment before being treated as definitive; the legal consequence does not depend on that discrepancy.

For plaintiffs, that is an important asymmetry. The contract classification may protect the payment stream from a federal termination argument, yet leave the prevailing party to absorb fees that might have been recoverable in a Copyright Act action. For defendants, the same point matters in reverse: losing the termination theory does not necessarily mean paying the other side’s Copyright Act fees.

What lawyers should listen for at argument

The appellate argument should not be heard as a referendum on whether courts favor celebrities, former spouses, widows, or heirs. The useful questions are narrower and more durable:

• What exactly did the marital settlement agreement transfer or preserve: title, control, a share of revenue, or a payment covenant?
• Does §304(c) reach the interest Cher enforced, or only the copyright grants from which the royalty income ultimately flowed?
• How much of the district court’s result rests on the post-Jan. 1, 1978 timing of the marital settlement agreement?
• Does the fee ruling confirm the state-law framing strongly enough to shape future pleading and settlement strategy?

For entertainment lawyers, the drafting lesson is not to sprinkle the word “royalties” and assume the answer follows. The agreement should say whether a party receives ownership, administration rights, audit rights, payment rights, rights against successors, or some combination of those interests. For family law practitioners, the question is whether the spouse receiving catalog income has a durable contractual claim even if the copyright chain later changes. For litigators, the question is whether the complaint is built as a copyright case, a contract case, or both—and whether the fee theory survives the chosen path.

If the Ninth Circuit upholds the district court’s framework, divorce-derived royalty obligations may remain insulated from §304(c) termination when they are structured as state-law payment rights rather than copyright grants. Plaintiffs enforcing those rights, however, should not assume that a successful contract theory brings Copyright Act fee recovery with it.

References

1. Ninth Circuit docket, Case No. 25-8085 — Justia — link
2. Cher Victory in Royalties War as Mary Bono Vows Appeal — Rolling Stone — Dec. 2025 — link
3. Sonny Bono Widow Appeals Loss in Cher Royalties Battle — Billboard — Dec. 2025 — link
4. Cher Denied $1 Million Legal Fees in Sonny Bono Widow Royalties Case — Rolling Stone — Jul. 21, 2026 — link
5. Cher v. Bono — Loeb & Loeb — Jun. 2024 — link
6. CD Cal. Says to Cher: “I Got You Babe” — Finnegan — 2024 — link
7. Cher and Share Alike: Singer Wins Copyright Termination Lawsuit — Copyright Lately — 2024 — link
8. What Cher’s Ruling Says About Music Royalties — Forbes — May 2024 — link
9. Cher vs. Mary Bono — Earp Cohn — 2024 — link
10. Cher Wins Royalties Case Against Sonny Bono’s Widow, Must Pay Her Own $1M Legal Bill — MusicTimes — Jul. 22, 2026 — link