The California District Court ruled that Warner\/Chappell Music does not hold a valid copyright in the lyrics to “Happy Birthday to You”, determining that Summy Co. \u2014 the predecessor through which Warner\/Chappell derived its claimed title \u2014 never received an assignment of the lyrics from the Hill sisters, the alleged authors. The decision means the song’s lyrics may be used commercially without payment of royalties.<\/p>\n
Warner\/Chappell Music had been claiming copyright ownership of the “Happy Birthday” lyrics for decades, earning an estimated (2) million dollars in revenue per year from licensing. The company claimed to be the successor-in-interest of Summy Co., which was said to have acquired the copyright from the authors Mildred Hill and Patty Hill in 1935.<\/p>\n
The plaintiffs in the case, Rupa Marya et al., brought proceedings before the California District Court contesting the validity of Warner\/Chappell’s copyright claim and the alleged transfer of ownership to Summy Co. The court reviewed copyright registrations, transfer agreements, publications, licences, and the records of earlier copyright proceedings.<\/p>\n
Judge King concluded as follows:<\/p>\n
The summary judgment record shows that there are triable issues of fact as to whether Patty wrote the Happy Birthday lyrics in the late Nineteenth Century and whether Mildred may have shared an interest in them as a co-author. Even assuming this is so, neither Patty nor Mildred nor Jessica ever did anything with their common law rights in the lyrics. For decades, with the possible exception of the publication of The Everyday Song Book in 1922, the Hill sisters did not authorize any publication of the lyrics. They did not try to obtain federal copyright protection. They did not take legal action to prevent the use of the lyrics by others, even as Happy Birthday became very popular and commercially valuable. In 1934, four decades after Patty supposedly wrote the song, they finally asserted their rights to the Happy Birthday\/Good Morning melody\u2014but still made no claim to the lyrics.<\/p>\n
Defendants ask us to find that the Hill sisters eventually gave Summy Co. the rights in the lyrics to exploit and protect, but this assertion has no support in the record. The Hill sisters gave Summy Co. the rights to the melody, and the rights to piano arrangements based on the melody, but never any rights to the lyrics. Defendants’ speculation, that the pleadings in the Hill-Summy lawsuit somehow show that the Second Agreement involved a transfer of rights in the lyrics is implausible and unreasonable. Defendants’ suggestion that the Third Agreement effected such a transfer is circular and fares no better. As far as the record is concerned, even if the Hill sisters still held common law rights by the time of the Second or Third Agreement, they did not give those rights to Summy Co.<\/p>\n
In light of the foregoing, Defendants’ Motion is DENIED and Plaintiffs’ Motion is GRANTED as set forth above. Because Summy Co. never acquired the rights to the Happy Birthday lyrics, Defendants, as Summy Co.’s purported successors-in-interest, do not own a valid copyright in the Happy Birthday lyrics.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Significance<\/h2>\n
By virtue of the judgment, the “Happy Birthday” lyrics may be rendered commercially without any risk of copyright infringement and without the obligation to pay royalties. The case, though complex, offers instruction on a range of copyright principles including:<\/p>\n
\n
- Works and Rights<\/li>\n
- Validity of Registration and importance of consistency in authorship<\/li>\n
- Copyright divesting by Publication<\/li>\n
- Forfeiture and Abandonment of copyright<\/li>\n
- Validity of transfer of ownership<\/li>\n
- Joint Authorship<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Reference: Rupa Marya, et al., Plaintiffs v. Warner\/Chappell Music, Inc., et al., Case 2:13-cv-04460-GHK-MRW, pages 42, 43.<\/em><\/p>\n
Disclaimer<\/h2>\n
This article is for general information and does not constitute legal advice. Readers should consult a qualified attorney before acting on any matter discussed here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A US court has ruled that Warner\/Chappell Music does not hold copyright in the ‘Happy Birthday’ lyrics. The decision places the lyrics in the public domain, allowing their commercial use without royalty concerns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":42,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[7480,93,7477,6225,242,1226,7087],"class_list":["post-29828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-copyrights","category-intellectual-property","tag-copyright-judgment","tag-copyright-law","tag-happy-birthday-song","tag-legal-case","tag-music-copyright","tag-public-domain","tag-warner-chappell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29828"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":149909,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29828\/revisions\/149909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}