Court's June 26 Record-Retrieval Deadline Looms in 1990 DAT Suit Against Sony

Lawyers for songwriter Sammy Cahn and four music publishers have until June 26 to retrieve six sealed documents filed in the July 1990 complaint (case 1:90-cv-04537) they brought to stop Sony from importing and selling digital audio tape recorders in the U.S. Clerks at the U.S. District Court in Manhattan will destroy the documents, which remain sealed, if they’re not picked up by the deadline, said court notices (in Pacer) posted May 25. Cahn and his fellow plaintiffs -- JAC Music, Fort Knox Music, Trio Music and Peer International -- with support from the National Music Publishers’ Association and the Songwriters Guild of America, sued Sony for contributory infringement on grounds that the company's digital audio tape recorders produced perfect copies that would inhibit future sales of commercial sound recordings. The complaint was terminated a year later after the consumer electronics industry reached the compromise legislative deal with the recording industry, music publishers and songwriters that became the framework for the Audio Home Recording Act. President George H.W. Bush signed the AHRA into law in 1992. Cahn died in 1993.