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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsBirthday Song’s Copyright Leads to a Lawsuit for the Ages
The song Happy Birthday to You is widely credited for being the most performed song in the world. But one of its latest venues may be the federal courthouse in Manhattan, where the only parties may be the litigants to a new legal battle.
The dispute stems from a lawsuit filed on Thursday by a filmmaker in New York who is seeking to have the court declare the popular ditty to be in the public domain, and to block a music company from claiming it owns the copyright to the song and charging licensing fees for its use.
The filmmaker, Jennifer Nelson, was producing a documentary movie, tentatively titled Happy Birthday, about the song, the lawsuit said. In one proposed scene, the song was to be performed.
But to use it in the film, she was told she would have to pay $1,500 and enter into a licensing agreement with Warner/Chappell, the publishing arm of the Warner Music Group. Ms. Nelsons company, Good Morning to You Productions, paid the fee and entered into the agreement, the suit says.
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The lawsuit notes that in the late 1800s, two sisters, Mildred J. Hill and Patty Smith Hill, wrote a song with the same melody called Good Morning to All. The suit tracks that songs evolution into the familiar birthday song, and its ownership over more than a century.
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http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/nyregion/lawsuit-aims-to-strip-happy-birthday-to-you-of-its-copyright.html?referrer=&_r=0
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)Kablooie
(18,646 posts)Other songs all fall into public domain after a period but not this one.
It's weird.
Panich52
(5,829 posts)Kablooie
(18,646 posts)each state has different standards as well as different countries.
A song can become public domain in one state but remain under copywrite in another.
Generic Other
(28,979 posts)"The TPP could extend copyright term protections from life of the author + 50 years, to Life + 70 years for works created by individuals, and either 95 years after publication or 120 years after creation for corporate owned works (such as Mickey Mouse)." says the Electronic Freedom Foundation.