Warner to be sued over royalties for 'Happy Birthday'

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Warner/Chappell is facing a lawsuit challenging the copyright status of ‘Happy Birthday to You’, famously the most profitable song in history.

The makers of a documentary about the song claim to have enough evidence to force the song’s legal owners to return millions of dollars made each year in licensing the song for films, commercials, radio and theatre.

Good Morning To You Productions has filed a lawsuit against Warner/Chappell that effectively argues the copyright held by the American publishing company isn’t particularly robust. The lawsuit explains:

More than 120 years after the melody to which the simple lyrics of Happy Birthday to You is set was first published, defendant Warner/Chappell boldly, but wrongfully and unlawfully, insists that it owns the copyright to Happy Birthday to You, and with that copyright the exclusive right to authorize the song’s reproduction, distribution, and public performances pursuant to federal copyright law. Defendant Warner/Chappell either has silenced those wishing to record or perform Happy Birthday to You or has extracted millions of dollars in unlawful licensing fees from those unwilling or unable to challenge its ownership claims.

Irrefutable documentary evidence, some dating back to 1893, s hows that the copyright to Happy Birthday to You, if there ever was a valid copyright to any part of the song expired no later than 1921 and that if defendant Warner/Chappell owns any rights to Happy Birthday to You, those rights are limited to the extremely narrow right to reproduce and distribute specific piano arrangements for the song published in 1935. Significantly, no court has ever adjudicated the validity or scope of the defendant’s claimed interest in Happy Birthday to You, nor in the song’s melody or lyrics, which are themselves independent works.

Plaintiff GMTY, on behalf of itself and all others similarly situated, seeks a declaration that Happy Birthday to You is dedicated to public use and is in the public domain as well as monetary damages and restitution of all the unlawful licensing fees that defendant Warner/Chappell improperly collected from GMTY and all other Class members.

The complaint cites multiple sources for the song’s melody and lyrics alongside several copyrights which are now expired and suggest that song belongs placed in the public domain.

As The Hollywood Reporter suggest, the “smoking gun” of the complaint is “a citation to a copy of a 1911 work published by the Board of Sunday Schools of the Methodist Episcopal Church” that prints the lyrics ”Happy birthday to you/Happy birthday to you/Happy birthday, dear John/Happy birthday to you” alongside the note ”sung to the same tune as the ‘Good Morning’…the songs and exercises referred to in this program may be in these books:… ‘Song Stories for the Sunday School,’ by Patty Hill.”

The song ‘Good Morning to All’ uses a melody that would evolve into ‘Happy Birthday to You’ and the Indiana school is report to have filed for copyright on their version in 1912.

Read the full complaint at Scribd.

[via The Hollywood Reporter]