'Historic result': Happy Birthday public domain deal agreed
Music publisher Warner/Chappell has agreed that “Happy Birthday to You” can enter the public domain and will pay out $14 million, in what has been described as a “historical result” by the film makers that brought the case.
Good Morning to You Productions submitted its settlement deal to the US District Court for the Central District of California on Monday, February 8. The deal will need to be signed off by Judge George King in a hearing scheduled for March 14.
The case stemmed from a class action lawsuit filed against Warner/Chappell in 2013 that said it was not the owner of the copyright to the lyrics in the popular song and had unfairly collected royalties.
Warner/Chappell had previously charged the film company $1,500 to use the song in a documentary.
But in September last year, Warner/Chappell lost its rights to the song after the California court ruled that another music publisher Clayton F Summy Company did not transfer the rights to the lyrics as part of a deal agreed in 1998.
Sisters Patty and Mildred Hill, the co-authors of the song around 100 years before in 1893, transferred the piano arrangements and melody to Clayton F Summy Company in 1935, but not the lyrics. Warner/Chappell bought Summy’s company in 1998 and has maintained ever since that it assumed the song’s copyright dating to 1935.
Following the September judgment, both parties agreed to settle the lawsuit.
The film makers said a ruling that the song can enter the public domain was a “historical result” and that it would not be worth taking a risk of further legal action.
“Plaintiffs have concluded that, notwithstanding their success in the action to this point, substantial risk remains that the song might not be declared in the public domain and the settlement class might recover far less than the settlement provides or nothing at all if the action were to continue,” the court document claimed.
The song was originally composed by the Kentucky-based Hill sisters under the name “Good Morning to All."
