‘Give a Little Bit’ Of Those Royalties: Court Says Supertramp Frontman Must Share Publishing

A federal appeals court has ruled that former Supertramp lead singer Roger Hodgson needs to share songwriting royalties from the 1970s rock band’s hit catalog with his fellow band members.

The Wednesday (Aug. 20) decision from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals caps off a yearslong legal battle between Hodgson on one side and Supertramp bassist Dougie Thomson, saxophonist John Helliwell and drummer Bob Siebenberg on the other.

The dispute stems from Hodgson’s 2018 decision to stop sharing Supertramp’s publishing royalties with his bandmates. The band’s catalog includes their chart-topping 1979 album Breakfast in America, as well as multiple other entries in the Billboard 200 — including the LPs Crime of the Century, Crisis? What Crisis?, Even in the Quietest Moments, Paris and Famous Last Words.

Hodgson won the case at trial in 2024, when a Los Angeles jury held that it was reasonable for him to terminate Supertramp’s 1977 revenue-splitting agreement after more than 40 years.

But the Ninth Circuit’s Wednesday ruling wipes that verdict away, holding that the case should never have gone to a jury at all. The appeals court says that as a matter of law, the 1977 contract obligates Hodgson to keep sharing songwriting royalties with Thomson, Helliwell and Siebenberg as long as Supertramp’s catalog keeps making money.

“At some point in the future, the copyrights in the works covered by the 1977 agreement will expire, and the works will fall into the public domain,” Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw wrote for a three-judge appellate panel. “At this point, the copyrights will cease to generate publishing royalties, and the obligations created by the 1977 agreement will terminate.”

Thomson, Helliwell and Siebenberg will now once again start receiving songwriting royalties from Hodgson — a decision praised by their attorneys David Burg and Anji Mandavia.

“We are extremely gratified that, by reversing the trial court’s clear error below, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has preserved our clients’ legacy for themselves and their heirs while restating common sense California law that will continue to govern similar matters going forward,” Burg and Mandavia said in a statement shared with Billboard on Thursday (Aug. 21).

Hodgson’s lawyers did not immediately a request for comment.

This dispute is unusual because Thomson, Helliwell and Siebenberg did not write music for Supertramp, meaning they typically would not be entitled to publishing royalties. But Hodgson and Supertramp keyboardist Rick Davies — the band’s two songwriters — agreed in 1977 to share publishing rights to help alleviate their bandmates’ financial troubles.

Between the lineup’s founding in 1973 and the commercial success of Breakfast in America in 1979, all of Supertramp’s recording royalties and tour revenues were going to repay early advances from their label A&M Records. This meant that while Hodgson and Davies were making money off publishing, the rest of the band was getting nothing.

So in 1977, Hodgson and Davies each agreed to reduce their 50% share of songwriting royalties to 27% a pop and give Thomson, Helliwell, Siebenberg and Supertramp’s manager 11.5% each. Hodgson testified at trial that he did this “to keep the band functioning and happy.”

Hodgson departed Supertramp in 1983, though the band continued to record and perform intermittently under various lineups in the years to follow. They continued to share songwriting revenues under the terms of the 1977 deal until 2018, when Hodgson and Davies stopped paying publishing royalties to their former bandmates.

Thomson, Helliwell and Siebenberg sued both Hodgson and Davies in 2021. Davies settled out of court in 2023, but Hodgson fought his ex-bandmates all the way through trial and the appeal process.