The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit denied a petition for a rehearing en banc, refusing to reconsider its decision that digitally remastered pre-1972 sound recordings are not new copyrighted songs. ABS Entertainment, Inc. v. CBS Corporation, et al., Case No. 16-55917 (9th Cir. Aug. 20 2018). 

Since the initial panel decision (IP Update, Vol. 21, No. 19), the Music Modernization Act was signed into law on October 11, 2018. The new law requires streaming services, such as Pandora, to start paying royalties for pre-1972 recordings but does not apply to radio operators, such as CBS. The Court modified its original opinion, omitting several pages of its analysis and rejection of CBS’s argument, and replaced them with cites to the new law.