The Beatles
Music publisher Dick James had owned the rights to much of the Lennon-McCartney catalog, but in the late 1960s he sold it to British broadcasting company Associated Television (ATV.) In the early 1980s, ATV’s parent company was losing money, so the owner offered to sell its music interests. Paul McCartney refused to buy ATV—he only wanted the Lennon-McCartney catalog; but they refused to sell it separately. During the wrangling, Michael Jackson stepped in and offered to buy ATV in its entirety, thus giving him control of the Lennon-McCartney catalog and about 20,000 other copyrights.
