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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?
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.
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.
From the ruling:
The 1909 Copyright Act, which governs E51990, did not require that a work be registered to
obtain a federal copyright. See 2-7 Nimmer 7.16. But registration was nonetheless
highly desirable, not only because it was a precondition to the filing of an infringement
suit, but also because, once registered, the certificate of registration “shall be admitted in
any court as prima facie evidence of the facts stated therein.” 17 U.S.C. 209 (1909 Act);
see also 17 U.S.C. 410(c) (1976 Act) (providing for the presumption of validity in the
modern Copyright Act). Furthermore, “[a]lthough the ‘facts’ stated in a certificate of
registration are limited to the date, name and description of the work, and name of the
registration holder, a majority of courts have held that 209 [of the 1909 Copyright Act]
creates a rebuttable presumption that the certificate holder has met all the requirements for
copyright validity.” Acad. of Motion Picture Arts & Scis. v. Creative House Promotions,
Inc., 944 F.2d 1446, 1451 (9th Cir. 1991). Once a claimant shows that she has a
certificate of registration, the burden of proof shifts to the opposing party who must “offer
some evidence or proof to dispute or deny the [claimant’s] prima facie case.” United
Fabrics Int’l, Inc. v. C&J Wear, Inc., 630 F.3d 1255, 1257 (9th Cir. 2011).
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.