A year ago, Legendary Pictures was confronted with a genuine sci-fi nightmare. Just as its Dune: Part Two rolled into theaters, the studio received an unexpected letter from Lionsgate claiming that it, not Legendary, held the foreign adaptation rights to Frank Herbert’s 1965 epic about political power, prophecy, and giant sandworms. In other words, the Denis Villeneuve blockbuster—which would gross more than $700 million globally—was being framed as a copyright infringement. To make matters worse, Lionsgate’s claim wasn’t entirely ridiculous.

Several studios and producers have taken a crack at Herbert’s so-called “unfilmable” novel over the past half-century: David Lynch, backed by Dino De Laurentiis, gave it a shot in 1984; Paramount, earlier this century, tried and failed. But Legendary secured its own attempt via a deal with Herbert’s estate, which clawed back the rights to Dune thanks to a quirk in older U.S. copyright law. To wit: If an author dies before the renewal term, the estate—not prior contractors—gets to decide who can make derivative works. That rule, which was affirmed by the Supreme Court in Stewart v. Abend (the 1990 case that had justices squinting at Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window), meant that Herbert’s previous movie deals were effectively canceled when he died in 1986. His heirs could—and did—start fresh. Or so everyone assumed.

What no one seemed to consider, however, was foreign copyright law. Namely, what if the original contract that granted De Laurentiis the rights to adapt Dune in the ’80s—a contract that had survived multiple corporate mergers and a bankruptcy, and eventually landed at Lionsgate—still carried weight overseas? Some jurisdictions, perhaps unsurprisingly, don’t follow the idiosyncrasies of the 1909 U.S. Copyright Act when it comes to reversions. Anyway, that spelled trouble for Legendary, which was betting big (and successfully) on Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya.

Finally, after months of quiet lawyering, a détente was reached. Legendary forked over a $13 million pittance, Lionsgate dropped its claim, and filming on Villeneuve’s third installment is now set to begin, with a release slated for late next year. (Both studios declined to comment about the dispute.)

The legal dust hasn’t entirely settled, but this under-the-radar Dune deal came just as Lionsgate finalized the move to spin off its studio division from its legacy linear TV assets. Perhaps not surprisingly, Legendary and Lionsgate are now in early talks about a potential merger, according to a recent Bloomberg report. There’s plenty of streaming-era logic behind a tie-up between the two biggest indie studios, which made The Hunger Games and Dune. Both obviously know a thing or two about empire building.

The Dune dispute is only one recent example of a broader entertainment industry reckoning over international copyright laws, as evidenced by a series of court cases pitting America’s idiosyncratic system against the rest of the world. The most visible case involves the heirs of Superman co-creator Joe Shuster, who are suing Warner Bros. on the theory that the rights to the character have reverted back to them in the U.K., Australia, Canada, and Ireland—even if they remain with the studio in the U.S. (I reported on this saga, which features Marc Toberoff, back in February.) A New York judge declined to block the international release of James Gunn’s Superman, which has earned more than $500 million globally, but the case is trudging along, threatening to redraw the borders of the world’s most iconic I.P.

Then there’s the sleeper dispute over Cyril Vetter’s ’60s hit “Double Shot (of My Baby’s Love)”, which Bruce Springsteen has called the “greatest fraternity rock song of all time.” Vetter sold the song rights for a mere dollar decades ago, but recently exercised U.S. termination rights to claw them back. The industry got a jolt last year when Louisiana federal judge Shelly Dick declared that Vetter’s reversion extended worldwide, citing international treaty obligations. That decision is now before the Fifth Circuit, where appellate judges are weighing whether U.S. reversion rights should, in fact, have global reach—a direct challenge to the long-standing assumption that copyright is territorial, and governed by each country’s domestic law.

The creative community is split on this one. A coalition of authors, dramaturgs, and songwriters filed an amicus brief urging the court to uphold the ruling, arguing that Congress intended reversion rights to be borderless. If the law doesn’t apply globally, they warn, publishers could sidestep the spirit of termination by simply publishing books overseas, in territories where they still hold the rights, and import the works back into the U.S. to compete with authors’ U.S. versions.

Meanwhile, studios and record labels have expressed a different view. In their briefs, they warn that current projects and deals will be thrown into chaos unless territorial laws are recognized. Their hypothetical nightmare scenario sounds eerily familiar: An author grants worldwide rights, dies before the renewal term, and the heir makes a deal with a rival studio. What if, say, the U.S. and U.K. courts issue conflicting rulings on who owns what? That would leave everyone from exhibitors to merchandisers paralyzed by uncertainty.

We may be close to that situation, anyway. After all, if Legendary and Lionsgate had gone to war over Dune, both studios might have landed in the legal purgatory that the Motion Picture Association amicus brief warned about: one blockbuster, multiple copyright realities, and a licensing landscape as navigable as a sandstorm on Arrakis.

As with many things in Hollywood, closure comes with a caveat. The Dune settlement triggered that exquisite genre of follow-up litigation: the insurance squabble. Last week, Atlantic Specialty Insurance sued fellow insurer Continental Casualty for a $3 million share of the $13 million that Legendary paid Lionsgate. The reason? Continental, which provided primary coverage on both Dune and Dune: Part Two, insisted the Lionsgate claim was a single instance of infringement—one they’d already covered. Atlantic disagrees, and wants its money back. The complaint was filed using pseudonyms (a quaint gesture that didn’t fool yours truly).

Sure, it’s an arcane fight, catnip for the insurance bar, and a source of eye-rolling from everyone else. But I’m curious how Lionsgate’s insurance situation may impact the Michael Jackson biopic, which is possibly being split into two parts. Indeed, with international copyright clashes becoming more frequent, and domestic and foreign rights diverging, studios may want to dust off their insurance policies and see who’s really on the hook.

Thanks, Eriq. See everyone on Thursday.

Matt