Michigan “Let’s Go Blue” songwriters counter-sue after a reported $1,000 sync license

The “Let’s Go Blue” fight just got a lot more specific, and a lot more expensive. In counterclaims filed Tuesday (June 11), composers Albert Ahronheim and Joe Carl say two publishers, Theodore Presser and Carl Fischer, licensed the song to Electronic Arts for College Football “behind their backs” for “approximately $1,000,” which they call “a shockingly low license fee.”

Ahronheim and Carl are not asking for a quiet correction. They are asking a judge to declare who actually owns the publishing and to award damages based on alleged wrongdoing by the other side. Their core story is that they exercised copyright termination rights years ago and therefore “now control the ‘Let’s Go Blue’ publishing,” while the publishers say the authors did not follow a procedural requirement before the 2013 effective date, so the termination notice was invalid.

This kind of dispute sounds abstract until you translate it into how media money moves. Music syncs are essentially licensing transactions that sit on a tight deadline, with publishers and rights holders needing to be sure they can grant permission without getting sued. If a termination right is effective, the author can claw back the copyright from the deal they signed decades earlier. If it is not effective, the publisher keeps licensing authority, and anyone who licenses without it can end up in court. The headline stake here is not whether “Let’s Go Blue” is famous. It’s whether the entity signing the license in a modern video game ecosystem truly had the authority to do so.

According to the publishers’ initial lawsuit, they have owned the song’s composition rights since 1978 and properly licensed a College Football deal with EA, after Ahronheim and Carl allegedly interfered and got the sync removed. The composers dispute that framing. In their counterclaims, they say they exercised their termination rights under copyright law in 2013, and they argue that Presser and Fischer accepted at the time that the publishing had reverted. Then, Ahronheim and Carl say that in 2024 they learned Presser and Fischer “had illegally licensed the song to EA behind their backs” for the “paltry sum of approximately $1,000.”

So what is the legal fault line? It comes down to technicalities of termination rights. Ahronheim and Carl claim their termination notice was proper and that their rights had reverted. Presser and Fischer argue their notice was invalid because the authors allegedly failed to make an official report to the U.S. Copyright Office before the 2013 effective date. In other words, the fight is not just about who wrote the song. It is about whether they followed the exact steps the law requires to make a decades-later clawback legally effective.

For decision-makers watching this, the interesting part is how predictable the incentives are. Publishers benefit from continuing to license works they control, especially when those works get new life through gaming, streaming, and sports entertainment. Authors benefit from termination rights, but termination only works if it is executed precisely. Courts become the referee when one side treats termination as a checkbox exercise and the other treats it as an entitlement that must comply with every procedural requirement.

Billboard also places this case in a broader pattern of litigation testing termination rights. It notes that Salt-N-Pepa is locked in a separate fight where Universal Music Group argues the duo can’t exercise the right because they did not actually sign their original record deal. It also flags ongoing questions about whether termination rights extend overseas, and an earlier ruling that termination rights couldn’t be invoked because a member of 2 Live Crew filed for bankruptcy. Put together, these cases show that termination rights are not a single on/off switch. They are a recurring legal battleground where ownership, contract history, and procedural compliance collide.

The consequence for the wider industry is simple: uncertainty around termination can inject risk into sync licensing. Even when both sides believe they are right, each new court fight adds friction to deals that traditionally depend on fast approvals and clean chain-of-title. And for authors, publishers, and the platforms and studios that license music, these lawsuits are a reminder that “old deals” are never really old. They can re-emerge years later with a new legal posture, a new claimant, and a new invoice for damages.

No one from Ahronheim’s or Carl’s team, from the publishers, or from EA responded immediately to requests for comment. But the procedural dispute, plus the reported $1,000 licensing figure, gives the case a sharp commercial edge. If the judge agrees with the authors, it reshapes who controls “Let’s Go Blue” for modern licensing. If the judge agrees with the publishers, it reinforces that termination rights can be derailed by paperwork timing. Either way, boards, investors, and dealmakers in music and media should watch closely, because the next headline like this will likely start the same way: with a signature from decades ago, and a modern sync that suddenly isn’t so simple.