She's discovered how difficult it is for anyone to be sure of what happened so long ago. But she has uncovered more than potential fraud. If the court rules in Nelson's favour Warner/Chappell might have to repay a fortune. After finding the original in a library, her legal team determined that it lacked the copyright notice required at the time of first publication, meaning that Happy Birthday to You was probably never in copyright and was merely reprinted in 1935. Buried within a cache of documents initially withheld and too blurry to read was a copy of a book with the music with birthday lyrics published in 1922, well before the 1935 publication that Warner/Chappell claimed was the first. She crowdfunded a lawsuit and has come up with what her legal team describe as a "proverbial smoking gun". Touched up for a mere $US1500 in 2013, filmmaker Jennifer Nelson said no. The performers it has touched up for money have found it easier to pay than argue, until now. This means that because the version Warner/Chappell claims to own was published in 1935, its multimillion-dollar copyright won't expire until 2030. But in 1909 the US extended the term of the extension, then extended it again in 1976 and again in 1998.Įvery one of those extensions was retrospective, right up to the present 67 years, making a total of 95. The initial term was 28 years, with an extension of 14 years on application. Back in those days authors had to register to stake a claim. Initially named "Good Morning to All", they published it in a 1894 book called Song Stories for the Kindergarten.īy rights it ought to be long out of copyright, if it was ever in it. Somewhere in the late 1880s they achieved something remarkable: a song that fitted the limited vocal range of children yet was meaningful, a bit like Kookaburra. They tried out their compositions on Patty's students. Just like Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree, wrongly listed in the Angus and Robertson All-time Favourite Australian Song Book as "traditional", Happy Birthday was actually composed by a person: two people in fact, Patty and Mildred Hill – one of them a teacher, the other a musicologist. One of them is that the world's favourite composition was a composition. The answers are spilling out in a US court case which is exposing how murky and fear-ridden the world of copyright really is. How can it be that a tune almost universally regarded as public property is still be in copyright 121 years after it was composed? Especially given that at the time the initial term of copyright was 28 years. That's a private rather than a public performance.
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Down boy.You're safe singing it at home though.
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I just hope that your dog doesn't complain. Want to have fun and avoid controversy, sing our song. (About 100 years ago!) Is there a copyright? Well one is claimed and royalties are often paid to use it. The actual birthday lyrics seemed to have no specific origin but were first combined with the melody in print in 1912. While there is controversy, the melody is generally attributed to two sisters, Mildred and Patty Hill, who wrote it for a song called "Good Morning to All". The real name of the song is "Happy Birthday to You" and it is often listed as the most recognized song in the English language.
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Additionally, it is often sung in English even by people that speak little or no English. These are the Happy Birthday lyrics for the best known version of the traditional Happy Birthday song that is sung by many in the United States and which has been translated or rewritten into other languages around the world. Happy Birthday Lyrics with "cha, cha, cha"
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