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"Happy Birthday To You" Now Public Domain
New submitter Duckman5 writes: As mentioned on multiple occasions, the popular song "Happy Birthday To You" has recently been the subject of a lawsuit between a couple of documentary filmmakers and Warner/Chappell Music. The judge in the case, George H. King, has finally issued his ruling and according to NPR and the LA Times, that song is finally in the public domain. Warner is still apparently "considering our options," so this may not be the end of it, but it seems to be a turn in the right direction. Also at the Washington Post, among many others.
A judge in the USA has ruled in favour of the obvious? Has someone contacted the devil yet?
It should be public domain due to how old it is, not that Warner doesn't have a valid copyright.
THE SOFTWARE, IT NO WORKY!!!
The judge didn't rule that that song is public domain now. It was just ruled that Warner/Chappell Music is not the copyright holder as they claimed to be. There still could be a copyright owner. The song has not reached the age to be public domain yet.
This was and has ever been the case for public domain works. Bach's Toccata and Fugue d-Minor is in the public domain, but performances of them are in general not.
No, they found that it was NEVER under copyright, the claimed copyright was to a piano arrangement of it, NOT the music NOT the lyrics which were both pre-existing.
It shows the big problem of copyright longer than people lives, because this could have been settled decades ago if the original people who signed the contracts were there for deposition!
Dead people can't testify in court, and copyright no longer requires registration, so there is no way to verify the copyright state of works of long dead people. A lot of who you *think* owns the copyright sold it long ago, and the means to even verify the signatures on the contracts becomes debatable.
Copyright law is a ridiculous monster these days. All effort and energy wasted in this case is bewildering. People spent many years studying this case to free this one song, to prove that it isn’t “owned” by anyone. This is ridiculous, a hundred years after who wrote the melody died. We are holding our culture, our art, at ransom in the hands of faceless greedy corporate entities, for the benefit of nobody. Copyright was originally meant to encourage more art to be created, not this.
This is a misreport. The judge didn't say that the Happy Birthday song was in the public domain. What he said was that the folks who claimed to own it failed to prove that they owned it. No one could produce an evidence trail substantiating that the folks who filed for copyright in the 1930s actually owned it. That makes the claimed copyright invalid but it doesn't preclude the existence of a copyright.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Happy Birthday to You!
and this song is free too!
Warner Bro-thers can Bite me!
This one is G N U !
I'm sorry but I read your submission and it quotes the article saying "the world’s most popular song belongs to...the world." What other interpretation is there besides that meaning it's public domain? As the AC below (and the articles) state, the song was published in 1922 without a notice of copyright. Under the laws governing copyright at the time, that means that they could not assert copyright on the Happy Birthday words. It's public domain.
I guess, theoretically, some cockroach could crawl out of the woodwork tomorrow and say "but look, my great grandaddy published the words WITH the copyright statement in 1921! I own the words!" Yes, it's possible, but not particularly likely. The only group to ever assert copyright on it was Warner and the chain of holders before they finally purchased it. At this point it might as well be over.
That's a legal argument that the plaintiffs made. The judge denied that one.
That's correct, the judge denied the argument. However, he argued the argument is denied because the plaintiffs didn't provide evidence that the publication of
Happy Birthday in The Everyday Song Book in 1922 was authorized.
He didn't argue that it was denied because the publication was only done by a licensee, like you say.
If you published an authorized work under the Copyright Act of 1909, and missed a copyright mark, the work would become public domain. From the ruling (some quotes removed):
Under the Copyright Act of 1909, one secured a federal copyright by publishing a
work with proper notice. Before such publication, the work was protected by common
law copyright. If the work was published without notice, two things happened: the
author (1) failed to obtain a federal copyright and (2) lost the common law copyright as
well.
General publication, which would cause a forfeiture, occurs “when, by consent of
the copyright owner, the original or tangible copies of a work are sold, leased, loaned,
given away, or otherwise made available to the general public, or when an authorized
offer is made to dispose of the work in any such manner, even if a sale or other such
disposition does not in fact occur.” 1 Nimmer 4.03. By contrast, a limited publication,
which does not cause a forfeiture, is when “tangible copies of the work are distributed
both (1) to a ‘definitely selected group,’ and (2) for a limited purpose, without the right of
further reproduction, distribution or sale.” Acad. of Motion Picture Arts & Scis., 944 F.2d
at 1452. Moreover, “mere performance or exhibition of a work does not constitute a
[general] publication of that work.” Am. Vitagraph, Inc. v. Levy, 659 F.2d 1023, 1027
(9th Cir. 1981).
The judge even said that this would apply for the 1922 publication:
If the [1922] publication was authorized, that could
make it a general publication (without proper copyright notice), divesting the Hill sisters
of their common law copyright.
But later on, he sais:
As Defendants [Time Warner] point out, there is no direct evidence
that the Hill sisters had authorized Summy Co. to grant permission for the publication of
the lyrics in The Everyday Song Book.
And concludes:
Plaintiffs cannot satisfy their initial burden under Rule 56. Accordingly,
Plaintiffs’ Motion is DENIED as to this issue.
http://xkcd.com/1581/
timeo Danaos, et dona ferentis
It doesn't matter, because the very existence of that songbook means the song predates 1922, which would mean even an "authorized" 1922 publication's copyright would have expired.
The judge did not rule that it is public domain, he ruled that the copyright only covered specific piano arrangements of the music, not the actual song an not the lyrics. Which is interesting as the evidence held by Warner/Chappell Music proved they never had legal claim to copyright on it, and that any copyright would have ended 10 years ago. I'm guessing the judge was just throwing them a bone.
Warner/Chappell Music kept all the original documentation from the Clayton F. Summy Co. filing of the copyright. Unfortunately, some of the documentation was never submitted as part of the copyright claim because it proved that the company had no legal grounds to the copyright.
As part of the case Warner/Chappell Music had to show all the information they had, which included the unfilled documents. The music was actually from another song dating older than the lyrics. The suspected origin of the lyrics, at least the first written account, put it out of its maximum copyright period in 2005.