Sing the song, blow out the candles, eat the cake and unwrap the gifts.
According to a court filing on Monday, music publisher Warner/Chappell will pay $14 million to end a lawsuit challenging its hold on the English language's most popular song, "Happy Birthday to You."
1 comment:
There seems to be a lot of mystery surrounding “Happy Birthday”. I think that if Warner Music had a provenance proving that they owned the rights to the song, they would have argued much harder over keeping the rights to it. I can’t imagine that “Happy Birthday” is a large percentage of the company’s revenue. For a song that everybody knows and sings, it could be used a lot in TV and movies. And restaurants. I find it somewhat surprising that with millions at stake there wasn’t a “lost heir” that came forward to claim that they owned the song or were entitled to compensation from its use. This “Happy Birthday” issue makes me think of other things this might apply to. What about singing the ABC’s? Does someone hold a copyright to that? Or the countless children’s songs and fairy tales? There might be a lot more songs out there that people think are in the public domain that others don’t.
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