Happy birthday to you, the ruling was true, no charge for this headline, 'coz the copyright's screwed Good news: you can now sing Happy Birthday without fear of someone demanding you get your checkbook out. A US judge has overturned a copyright claim to Happy Birthday, declaring the seminal number is not owned by a group that includes Warner/Chappell Music, which has been collecting royalties for the song's performances. The …
I did read elsewhere that the courts will be instructing Warner to hand back the money they have been illegally garnering over the years.
I wonder if this could create a precedent, whereby, holders of highly contentious copyright, must ring-fence all monies gained, in lieu of future negative court findings.
In practice, copyright trolls, would need to show the money they are collecting is being invested safely and if they wish to gain any use of that money, then they can only use it as "collateral" in raising credit.
Obviously, collateral, in itself, would be contentious, as creditors would need to understand, the asset could quite easily revert back to its original and true owners, if the courts later find the copyright had been issued in America and thus worthless.
"The Judge got one right"
erm... only half right, surely, if he struck down copyright for tune+lyrics only. As I understand the article it means Warner still own copyright for the tune of Happy Birthday even though the copyright over this tune was asserted in 1935, 80 years ago. AFAIK the US copyright got extended to 70 years (which is still insanely far too long, but that's another argument), so should the tune not be out of copyright anyway??
@Dr Syntax - "Sometimes reading is so difficult"
Apparently so since you did not understand what I wrote and/or the article
The copyright of the ORIGINAL song from the 1890s expired in 1949. However the owners of that copyright asserted their rights to 'Happy Birthday' in 1935. Since Warner has been collecting royalties on 'Happy Birthday' until recently, clearly the Happy Birthday copyright did NOT expire in 1949.
Also, since the judge struck down copyright only for combination of lyrics+tune, and not for the tune, it means the copyright for the tune is either still under copyright (80 years and counting), or else was still under copyright when the facts under litigation took place
I must admit that I don't understand the legalities, but from what I think I understand, under US law, copyright for published works commences when a work is first published. This would make the melody for both versions start in 1893, when it was included in "Song Stories for the Kindergarten".
This is where I'm a bit confused, because according to Cornell University, this is a work first published before 1923, so should have been in the public domain long since.
The pdf of the judgement suggests that the copyright was actually extended until 1949, which is where this date comes from. So one way or another the melody should have been out of copyright before Warner/Chappell asserted ownership.
Unless I completely misunderstand US copyright law, you cannot extend copyright by registering a new copyright claim on an already copyrighted work. As far as I can tell, what was registered in 1935 was a copyright to a song with the happy birthday lyrics and the good morning melody. But this would not have extended the copyright of the melody in isolation, so once it's copyright expired in 1949, the melody was out of copyright, and Summy Co. or it's successors would not have been able to assert any claim on the melody except in conjunction with the Happy Birthday lyrics.
This is what I was trying to say.
I think that your point is covered by "The copyright of Good Morning expired in 1949".
From what I read, Warner/Chappell can still claim copyright for some specific imprint, meaning that it is a copyright violation to photocopy or perform from the copies that they published, in the same way that you can have copyright over an imprint of the sheet music for, say, Beethoven's Ode to Joy without claiming any ownership of the music itself. What the legislation states in these cases is that it is the format and annotations of the printed work that is copyright, not the tune itself.
So it would be perfectly legal to take a copy of the out-of-copyright original song "Good Morning", and re-typeset and publish it, and prevent someone from photocopying your imprint, but you would not be able to prevent them working from the same copy you used to produce your publication.
In this case, as far as I can see, Warner/Chappell were claiming literary copyright of the words to "Happy Birthday" as a literary text, and trying to assert ownership. The words may still be copyrightable, but the judge decided that Warner/Chappell did not own that copyright. As such, it will become an "Orphan Work" unless someone else states a claim.
There are various sites (like The Choral Public Domain Library) that exist as repositories for works in the public domain being re-typeset from old copies, and published under an open license for the benefit of the community as a whole. It works a bit like Project Gutenberg for choral music, although it relies on it's users for content.
@Peter G
I understand what you're saying about imprints, however Since Warner were apparently collecting royalties from restaurant chains based on their staff singing the Happy Birthday song at clients' birthdays, and from filmmakers when the song is performed in a film, their copyright is of the song itself not a specific imprint.
re: "' ..."original" birthday songs at many chain eateries' ... But that was not a bad thing!"
The dishwashers, waitstaff, and captive audience at the perpetrating chain slop buckets would likely have a different opinion. See what happens when labour unions lose power?
Andrew seems to be of the view that everything must be owned, and profited from regardless, so yes I would imagine he thinks that this ruling is wrong.
The length of copyright is only one of my objections. The complexities involved seem to be designed to advantage those with the deepest pockets.
I could be wrong, but it does look like IP law is for big business only.
The ruling doesn't touch on the validity of copyright in general, or even on term lengths in particular. It merely finds that there's no evidence that this specific copyright belongs to this specific party.
So there's no real legal point or precedent being established here. This is about the facts of the case, not the law. If Mr Orlowski is grinding his teeth, then he's wearing them down quite misguidedly.
I mistyped slightly in my original post. I meant to say "Even if the original copyright claim was valid (which it wasnt)"
I've got no problems with copyright in principle, I copyright all my code (though I also open-source it), but its practice is becoming silly. Every time Steamboat Willy is in danger of going out of copyright, the terms get extended. I'm of the opinion that older copyright terms (life + x years for individuals, 50 or so years for corporations) are fine and now it's becoming far too unbalanced in favour of big rich corporations who are trying to grind our rights into the ground in favour of theirs. See the Dancing Baby case for examples of where copyright is getting silly, or the attempt by Sony to claim a Blender Foundation movie as their own work for where it's getting abusive.
And there's an additional problem now, electronic works (software mainly) can become lost and forgotten long before their copyright expires. This is causing things to be lost forever. Maybe software should be subject to a new copyright term, say, for example, "For as long as it's being actively developed, + 10 years".
" for example, "For as long as it's being actively developed, + 10 years"."
Hey, cool idea. That means that Windows XP would be dropping out of copyright in a few more years. And, at the rate things are going, there'll still be a few hundreds of million copies of it running. :-)
Dave
P.S. I'll get my coat. It's the one with the CD of Windows XP in the pock...hey, who stole my CD?
There is no doubt that copyright durations are crazy, particularly the extensions that seem to crop up when Disney want them. Loosing the concept of copyright itself would also be crazy for oft discussed reasons, though its misapplication (e.g. the handwriting of a famous person is an "artistic work" - bollox) has damaged its reputation considerably.
Funny how when the public 'steals' from this mob and its cronies all hell breaks loose but when they steal from the public nothing happens for 80 years.
What we need is a class action against this mob of hustlers and carpetbaggers to set a precedent. Only when they're on the receiving end of litigation and have to pay back with interest the millions of dollars they've stolen from us will they begin to take note. Essentially, they've to be 'bashed' into being reasonable.
It would be nice to think our legislators would take this case into account and make fairer, more reasonable copyright law but I daren't hold my breath.
Just because it's a story from America, doesn't mean it should be published in American. You don't expect stories from Russia to be published only in Russian, do you?
A real publication has its own editing standards, which will dictate how words are spelled when there is more than one "standard" spelling. E.g.. But it's a bit much to expect El Reg to employ subeditors to actually enforce standards like those, so here we are.
Dear occasional poster, lets try to avoid ridiculous pedantry about spelling.
In particular YOUR OXFORD ENGLISH dictionary includes many or most of the words we use here in America (not to mention the slang) and the very authors/publishers admit that "English" (Not "British") is an extraordinarily mutable language which changes both spelling and meaning over time. Even the word "English" no longer has a single meaning.
Do keep up dear chap.
you said:
even though the copyright over this tune was asserted in 1935.
This is true, however, the copyright to the actual "Happy Birthday" melody (Good Morning To All) had expired in 1949 and therefore moved into the Public Domain. In 1998, the "extended version" of copyright protection, also known as the "Save Mickey Mouse Law" would apply only to works still under copyright protection at the time of the laws enactment. You can do the math because works that had fallen into the Public Domain years before could not be "retroactively" re-copyrighted. The Disney creations that the law was written to protect were coming to the end of their active copyright life and they, and others still in active copyright protection were extended. So, in short, Warner/Chappel it seems is truly out of luck since they only claimed legal ownership to the lyrics of the song. The melody was apparently only going along for the ride.
In the original version of "The Wrong Trousers" Gromit opens a birthday card and it sings an electronic version of "Happy Birthday". If you buy the DVD now, it plays "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" - presumably because Warner/Chappell got on their high horse.
I hope they put it back again.
This was the right ruling, but for the wrong reason, I say.
Frankly, "Happy Birthday" should be classified as modern folk music and hence, simply un-copyrightable by any party whatsoever, in much the way a trademark can become genericized by becoming house-hold words used to apply to any such device (such as band-aid.)
I think it's time to reform copyright to give protection of 3 times the length it took to create the work. Derivatives do not reset the clock, nor do 2 people working on it double the protection time.
So books can have 3 years if they took a year to write. Music - what, a month to write, record and mix - they can have 3 months.
Happy birthday can have the 30 seconds of copyright protection that it deserved in the first place.
And Duke Nukem Forever can have 45 years.
I am guessing that you do not write books or songs or poems. Is a book that took five years to write going to get fifteen years worth of royalties? Is a song that was slowly developing in a composer's head over a decade, but which finally took a couple of days to write down, worth more than a sudden inspiration dashed off on the back of a table napkin? What about copyright in prioprietory code? If it taks a team of 100 working over four years, do they get a century or so of copyright?
If we leave it to the public to pay what they think is fair, creators would get about 5p each. Thats' why copyright laws exist.
Actually, copyright laws exist so that you, Smallname McProfessor, or Nobody MacFictionAuthor can't write a groundbreaking book, struggle to put out a few copies, only to have Giantfirm O'PrintingPress start churning out tome after tome and taking 100% of the money that ought to belong to you.
Of course, that was what copyright laws were INTENDED for. Nowadays, Giantfirm O'PrintingPress just buys your arse lock, stock, and barrel, and take 99% of the money that ought to belong to you.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
