Live music is returning to Paddy's Coffee House.

After months of dealing with a legal tangle about copyright licenses, owner Paddy Iyer is bringing back the bands Saturday night. The lineup of local acts performing from 5 to 9 p.m. will include Cosmic Machine, S.K.O.P.E., UnReachable, Ipswich and Christian Francisco.

"I had to pull the plug," Iyer said. "Then these kids were just trying to scramble along and find a venue. ... That became a little nightmarish, so I said let's just pay up and do it."

Iyer is asking for donations at the show to help pay off the venue's licensing fees, which add up to nearly $800 a year.

Paddy's, the city's primary live music venue, canceled open-mic nights and stopped scheduling singers in March after the coffeehouse was targeted by The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, one of two groups that collect royalties for thousands of songwriters and composers.

"It just left a pretty sour taste in the mouth," Iyer said.

The nonprofit group, known as ASCAP, protects its members and their more than 8.5 million songs from copyright violation. Copyright law prohibits venues, including coffee shops and restaurants, from playing copyrighted music without compensating the owner of the song. ASCAP and a similar group that represents a different set of songwriters, Broadcast Music Inc., or BMI, have been collecting licensing fees from venues for decades. Iyer already had been paying a

Other local coffee shops and restaurants also have been pursued by the copyright groups.

ASCAP distributes proceeds to songwriters based on surveys on music usage on radio stations, theme parks and other outlets. Copyright violation penalties range from $500 to $30,000, and the group sues about 300 venues a year.