Arent Fox’s Paul Fakler, a partner with the firm’s Media and Entertainment practice in New York, was quoted in an article appearing in the May 2012 edition of ABA Journal. The article, “Reliving the Golden Oldies: Rockers Reclaim Tunes After Revised Copyright Laws,” takes a look at the Copyright Act of 1976, which gives people the right to reclaim copyrights to post-1977 music after just 35 years. The previous copyright law required artists to wait at least 56 years to reclaim their rights. ABA Journal reports:

Record labels are expected to argue that all sound recordings should either be seen as collective works or compilations—a position that’s supportable, according to David Carson, general counsel for the US Copyright Office. “There’s a pretty decent argument that just about any record album containing separate tracks will be a collective work,” Carson says. He adds that an album made up of 10 disparate tracks can be viewed as a collective work—assuming it’s not a thematically connected rock opera like Tommy, The Who’s 1969 album.

But Paul Fakler, a partner at Arent Fox in New York City, argues that sound recordings rarely meet the criteria for collective works or compilations. They’re not part of a compilation because labels “don’t commission individual tracks separately,” he argues. Rather, they generally give artists a contract and tell them to create an album.

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