Cher Wins Royalty Battle With Sonny Bono’s Widow

Cher has won her yearslong copyright lawsuit against Sonny Bono’s widow over royalty payments from the Sonny & Cher catalog, a federal judge in the Central District of California ruled on Wednesday.

The dispute tied to Cher’s suit goes back many years. When she and Bono settled their divorce in 1978, it was determined that Cher was entitled to a 50 percent stake in the Sonny & Cher publishing catalog. After Bono died in 1998, Cher and Bono’s heirs entered a partnership over the songs. But in 2016, Mary Bono exercised the Copyright Act’s “termination rights,” which allows songwriters or their heirs to win back control of their U.S. publishing rights after 35 years. By 2021, Mary Bono claimed that through those termination rights she could stop paying royalties, and Cher subsequently sued.

Per Wednesday’s ruling,  U.S. District Judge John Kronstadt determined Cher is entitled to those royalties even with the termination rights exercised, upholding the tentative ruling he reached in February.

Sonny & Cher were active from the early Sixties until their divorce, during which time Sonny Bono penned several of the duo’s biggest hits, including “I Got You Babe,” “Baby Don’t Go,” and “The Beat Goes On.” In 2015, Rolling Stone placed Sonny & Cher at Number 18 on the Greatest Duos of All Time list.

According to Wednesday’s ruling, there’s about $418,000 in royalties that would’ve been paid out to Cher as of June 30, 2022. Reps for Cher and Mary Bono didn’t immediately respond to Rolling Stone’s requests for comment.