Royalties

Sitting on a cheap vinyl chair in a cramped office, his desk topped with a small green-and-blue flag and a plastic ice cream container holding pencils, Magosi Tumagole could be a small-town accountant, not the royal elder of Africa's richest tribe.

A federal jury in Los Angeles ruled Friday that Eminem's music royalties don't change just because a song has been sold online. The decision prevents, at least for now, an upending of the music industry that could have greatly changed the financial relationship between record labels and artists, in which labels have long commanded most of the proceeds from album sales.

By all rights, Deborah Gregory should be sitting pretty: As a first-time author, she wrote the Cheetah Girls novels, a bubbly, 16-book series that became hugely popular with American tweens and teens. And she appeared to hit an even bigger jackpot when she sold the dramatic rights to the Disney Channel. Her breezy, street-smart tales of five girls chasing pop music careers were turned into two hit television movies, and a third is now being filmed in India.

More than a dozen recording artists, including the estates of Count Basie and Benny Goodman, sued Universal Music on Friday, saying they had been cheated out of more than $6 million in royalties since 1998. The artists, many of whom signed with recording companies that were later bought by Universal, sued the world's largest music label for breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty in an action filed in New York state's court system.

With ratification of a hard-fought contract imminent, the Writers Guild of America has shifted its fight with movie and television studios to a new front: the state Legislature. The guild and two labor allies, the Screen Actors Guild and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters union, on Monday announced that they were sponsoring a bill that could boost their share of revenues when programs are licensed to be shown on affiliated cable networks or stations.

The Supreme Court has limited the ability of companies to collect multiple royalties on their patents. The unanimous decision Monday was helpful to customers of Intel Corp. and is the latest step by the justices to scale back the power of patent holders. The case revolves around a longtime Supreme Court doctrine that says the sale of an invention exhausts the patent holder's right to control how the purchaser uses it. In 1992, a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C.

She did it her way, with boots that were made for walking, when Nancy Sinatra followed in her famous father's footsteps by becoming a singer. Now, just as the late Frank Sinatra did, she's striding down another similar path -- activism for fellow musicians. On Wednesday, she headlined a House subcommittee hearing, urging lawmakers to force broadcast radio stations to pay royalties to performers and record companies when the stations air their songs.

Legislators excoriated top Interior Department officials Thursday at a hearing on the sex, drugs and gifts scandal in the oil royalties program, saying the scandal could have dire ramifications for the anticipated expansion of offshore drilling along U.S. coasts. The hearing before the House Committee on Natural Resources came a week after the department's inspector general, Earl E.

Royalties that digital music companies, including Apple Inc. and record labels, pay songwriters for selling their music as ring tones, CDs and permanent digital downloads are to be set today by a federal agency. This is the first time in nearly three decades that the industry has been unable to decide the fee for sales of recorded music on its own. Apple has so strongly opposed increasing the rate, now 9.

Qualcomm Inc., the San Diego-based chip maker, will receive about $2.3 billion as part of a royalty-fight settlement with Nokia Corp., the world's leading maker of cellphones. The one-time payment, which Nokia made public Thursday when it reported third-quarter financial results, was roughly what analysts had expected since the two companies announced that they had reached an agreement in July. Qualcomm's shares gained $2.60, or 7%, to $38.89. Nokia's shares jumped $1.50, or 10%, to $16.57.