Movie-maker tries to wipe ‘Happy Birthday’ copyright
A documentary-maker has sued US publishing house Warner/Chappell Music in an attempt to invalidate the copyright protecting the Happy Birthday to You song.
In a class action suit filed on June 13, Good Morning To You (GMTY) says there is “irrefutable evidence” that all copyright within the song, which originates from another song written before 1893, expired no later than 1921.
The production company has asked the US District Court for the Southern District of New York to restore the song to the public domain and recover “millions of dollars of unlawful licensing fees” collected by Warner/Chappell.
According to the suit: “The copyright to Happy Birthday to You, if there ever was a valid copyright to any part of the song, expired no later than 1921 and that if defendant Warner/Chappell owns any rights to Happy Birthday to You, those rights are limited to the extremely narrow right to reproduce and distribute specific piano arrangements for the song published in 1935.”
The suit was filed after GMTY had to pay Warner/Chappell $1,500 to play the song in its documentary earlier this year.
Happy Birthday to You’s melody was originally in a song called Good Morning to All, the suit says, and its rights were assigned to Clayton Summy, who published it in 1893. The song was revised three years later, but the suit says these two copyrights expired in 1921 and 1924, respectively.
Further rights contained within Good Morning to All, dated to 1899 and 1907, were not renewed by Summy, and expired in 1927 and 1935, the suit says.
The suit claims that all four copyrights (1893, 1896, 1899 and 1907) to Good Morning to All were forfeited anyway, after the song was republished in 1921 “without proper notice of its original 1893 copyright”.
Over time the song evolved into Happy Birthday to You, the suit says, but its copyright dated 1935 “pertained only to the piano arrangements, not to the melody or lyrics” of the song.
Summy’s business was acquired by Warner/Chappell in about 1998, the suit said, and the company has been licensing the song since.
The class action, which may include thousands of people according to the filing, covers “all persons or entities” that have licensed the song from Warner/Chappell since June 13, 2009.
Happy Birthday to You is believed to be the most popular song of the 20th century and (in 1998) was listed by the Guinness Book of Records as the most recognised song in the English language.
