Monday, October 12, 2015
Happy Birthday And The Problem With The Copyright Office's 'Orphan Works' Plan
Techdirt: A few weeks ago, we wrote about the big ruling by Judge George King in a district court in California that Warner/Chappell does not hold a valid copyright in the song "Happy Birthday." The press ran with the story, with nearly all of the coverage falsely stating that the judge had declared Happy Birthday to be in the public domain. As we noted in our post, however, that was not the case.
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Sounds a whole lot like Happy Birthday is going to end up on TV. With something this big there is no way that it is going to remain "orphaned" and, not that I am clear on the legal bits here, but once someone does a "good faith search for the owner" can't everyone else just cite it? Also the case is still going to move forward. There is still the possibility of Happy Birthday entering the public domain.
It also seems worth mentioning that this is ridiculous! This is like a case out of Charles Dickens, it is so convoluted to the point where the in the end whoever actually has the copyright is never going to be discovered, and even if someone could it wouldn't matter much at this point. This debacle really just needs to end, Happy birthday we got you, Mickey Mouse your days are numbered.
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