Daryl Hall and John Oates have resolved their dispute over Oates’ plan to sell his half of their joint venture to Primary Wave Music. Court documents filed Aug. 11 reveal the legal back-and-forth between the duo has now been privately resolved, without any additional information on their deal.
The pair started litigation in 2023 when Hall launched arbitration seeking to block Oates from selling his stake in Whole Oats Enterprises — this includes the band’s name and likeness rights as well as royalties — to Primary Wave.
Primary Wave has become a music-catalog marketing powerhouse over the past 15 years, acquiring assets from Bob Marley, Whitney Houston, James Brown, Prince and many other artists and marketing those assets largely in cooperation with the artists’ reps or estates. As a storied heritage act with dozens of hits that spawned in the 1970s and ‘80s (songs such as “Kiss on My List” and “I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do”), Hall and Oates fit into their business model.
A Nashville judge temporarily blocked Oates’ proposed sale of his share in November of 2023, ruling that the proposed deal could not go through until an arbitrator could decide whether to impose a restraining order.
In the 2023 filings, Hall accused Oates of blindsiding and betraying him. Oates replied in his own filings that he was “deeply hurt” Hall was making “inflammatory, outlandish, and inaccurate statements” about him.
Representatives for Hall and Oates did not immediately return Variety‘s request for comment.
Oates told The Associated Press in 2024 that he’s had “no communication” with Hall and declined to discuss the legal proceedings. He also said that a reunion was “not in my plans at all.”
“You can ask Daryl Hall what he thinks,” he said at the time. “But for me personally, no.”
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