Techdirt: It ain't over yet, folks. While many in the press went on and on back in September that the song "Happy Birthday" had been declared in the "public domain," as we pointed out, that's not what the judge said. He only said that the Summy Co. did not hold the copyright, because it seemed clear from a lawsuit back in the 1940s that the Hill Sisters (who sorta wrote the song -- long story) only assigned the rights to the music and not the lyrics -- and everyone agrees the music is now in the public domain. As we pointed out, this actually made the song an "orphan work", which created a new kind of mess, and as we noted, it was entirely possible that a third party could now make a claim to holding the copyright -- though we thought it was unlikely.
Oh, how naive of us.
1 comment:
The gift that keeps on giving. I suppose it is not surprising that someone else has made the claim that Happy Birthday is actually theirs. Honestly though I could see this being a good thing. They seem to be the obvious choice which means that this next ruling could be the last one. If they have it they have it, done deal. If they do not have it there will be no one left with any reasonable claim. A ruling that they cannot claim it would mean that it has to be in the public domain (at least according to Isaac's reasonable train of thought). It is possible, I guess *exasperatedly*, that a ruling here may not settle it given our litigious nature and the millions of dollars that could stem from such an acquisition.
On a different copyright note, Disney and CMU are friends. Disney now owns Star Wars. The result of this is that in the bookstore right now you can buy all sorts of CMU/Star Wars t-shirts. 5/5 Strongly Recommend
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