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"Happy Birthday" Public Domain After All?
New submitter jazzdude00021 writes: No song has had as contentious of copyright history as "Happy Birthday." The song is nearly ubiquitous at birthday parties in the USA, and even has several translations with the same tune. Due to copyrights held by Warner Music, public performances have historically commanded royalty fees. However, a new lawsuit has been brought to prove that "Happy Birthday" is, and always has been, in the public domain.The discovery phase for this lawsuit ended on July, 11 2014, yet this past week new evidence surfaced from Warner Music that may substantiate the claim that the lyrics were in the public domain long before the copyright laws changed in 1927.
That's the probem with copyright long after the creator is dead. You can't get them to testify under oath and so bogus copyrights like this are inevitable.
Here Warner had evidence that the lyrics predated their claim from other sources, and and the music they never made a clim on, so what they did was claim copyright on the lyrics based a piano arangement.
They would have known their claim was false because so many claims have been made about this copyright they would have examined it to protect their multi-million investment, so they likely acted to deceive.
That's a trademark, the copyright is in the cartoon 'steamboat willy', which should be copyable and would not stop Disney from holding the trademark.