[MCN-L] FW: Happy Birthday: candles blown out on infamous copyright claim

[Amalyah Keshet]

" an appeal is inevitable..."  but for now, congratulations!

A.



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-Original Message-
Sent: 23 September, 2015 2:31 PM
To: ipkat_read...@googlegroups.com


"Happy Birthday to You" is notorious in copyright terms and frequently cited as 
a reason why copyright needs fundamental reform. The song, allegedly the most 
widely performed in the world, is over 100 years old, yet Warner-Chappell Music 
has asserted that it holds copyright in the lyrics and claims royalties in 
respect of any public performance.

However, US District Judge George H. King in the Central District of California 
has granted summary judgment to a group of plaintiffs who are taking a class 
action against Warner-Chappell, holding that Warner-Chappell do not hold any 
valid copyright in the Happy Birthday lyrics. As it was uncontested that the 
music was already out of copyright, this paves the way for unrestrained 
renditions of the Happy Birthday song in restaurants, them parks, recording 
studios and movie sets across the USA. The full Opinion can be accessed here, 
courtesy of Plainsite.org (document 244 at the top of the list at time of 
writing).


The party's over for Warner-Chappell, subject to any appeal.


The legal proceedings were reported in some detail by the 1709 Blog back in 
March. Briefly, the plaintiffs (who had been compelled to pay a royalty of some 
$1500 to Warner-Chappell) took a class action on behalf of those who had been 
similarly forced to pay such royalties. The judge bifurcated the proceedings, 
putting the financial and class action aspects on hold, pending a determination 
of the validity of the copyright.

The history of the Happy Birthday song is shrouded in much uncertainty, and 
indeed the judge was unable to resolve many of the facts sufficiently clearly 
to allow summary determination of many issues, holding that only a full trial 
could resolve the facts.

However, this much is known. Two sisters, Mildred and Patty Hill, wrote another 
song, Good Morning to All, which had the same melody and the same verse 
structure as Happy Birthday, some time before 1893. In the early 1900s there 
were references to the singing of a song called Happy Birthday to You but 
without full publication of the lyrics. These were however published in full in 
1911, and it is unclear if this was with the knowledge or consent of the Hill 
sisters (if it was with their consent, then their common law rights would have 
been extinguished and the subsequent copyright registration, purporting to 
copyright the lyrics, would have been invalid).
It was also unclear whether Patty Hill was the author of these lyrics, the 
first evidence for this being a claim she made in the 1930s, some 40 years 
after she claimed to have written the lyrics.


The pre-1893 song sharing the Happy Birthday melody

There was then a series of assignments and agreements covering various 
copyrights, from the Hill sisters to Clayton F. Summy, from whom 
Warner-Chappell derived their rights. Again it was unclear to the judge whether 
the Happy Birthday lyrics were ever assigned to Summy, it being more likely 
that they had assigned copyright in the melody and in a piano arrangement. 
Another major uncertainty was whether the copyright registration, on which 
Warner-Chappel have been relying for many years, in fact was a registration 
covering the lyrics, the judge holding that it was only evidence of a 
registration for a piano arrangement of the melody.

Ultimately, the lack of definitive evidence of an assignment of the Happy 
Birthday lyrics from the Hill sisters to Summy was held to be fatal. No 
determination was made on the factual question of whether the Hill sisters even 
wrote the famous lyrics, or whether they still had any common law rights in the 
lyrics by the time any copyright might have been registered, but these 
questions became immaterial once the judge had concluded that Warner-Chappell 
failed to show a valid chain of title from the Hill sisters in any event.

Merpel suspects that an appeal is inevitable, but for now, she welcomes the 
result and looks forward to caterwauling the Happy Birthday song at every 
opportunity when she next visits the USA.

--
Posted By Merpel to The IPKat on 9/23/2015 12:31:00 pm

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