JAY Z Wins the Rights to Masters of His Own Albums

In case you’ve forgotten, JAY Z has been busy with a legal battle with sound engineer Chauncey Mahan over the ownership of masters of Vol. 3…The Life and Times of S. Carter and The Dynasty for the past 12 months or so. Claiming co-authorship of 41 songs in Hov’s catalog, Mahan brought forth a lawsuit over $100,000 against JAY and Roc Nation, which was filed shortly after Mahan was accused of extorting Hov and Roc Nation for masters, outtakes and other unreleased material that he retained on hard drives more than a decade after the recording of Vol. 3…The Life and Times of S. Carter. In his lawsuit, Mahan claimed to have notified Roc-A-Fella in 2000 that he was in possession of the studio recordings but never heard back from the label.

Last week a U.S. District Judge in New York favored on the side of JAY Z and Roc Nation in the lawsuit, arguing that Mahan had reasonable notice that “royalties were owed to him in this situation” and waited far too long to bring the lawsuit to court.