Everyone agrees the song was originally written as "Good Morning to All" in the late 1800s, but from there, there's lots of confusion and speculation as to how it eventually was given a copyright in 1935, granted to the Clayton F. There are all sorts of questions raised about how it became covered by copyright in the first place. If you haven't been following the issue closely, there is actually a lot of evidence, much of it put together by Robert Brauneis, that the song really should be in the public domain. Furthermore, it definitively shows that the work was and is in the public domain. (1) Warner/Chappell Music (who claims to hold the copyright for the publishing, if it exists) suddenly "found" a bunch of relevant documents that it was supposed to hand over in discovery last year, but didn't until just a few weeks ago, and (2) a rather important bit of information in one of those new documents was somewhat bizarrely "blurred out." This led the plaintiffs go searching for the original, and discover that it undermines Warner Music's arguments, to the point of showing that the company was almost certainly misleading the court. in the high profile lawsuit over the copyright status of the song "Happy Birthday," the plaintiffs "Good Morning to You Productions" (who are making a documentary about the song and are arguing that the song is in the public domain) have popped up with a last minute filing, saying they have just come across evidence that the song is absolutely in the public domain.Īnd, here's the real kicker: they discovered this bit of evidence after two questionable things happened. The discovery process in a lawsuit generally reveals most of the evidence revealed to everyone pretty early on. Last minute evidence that completely turns a legal case on its head doesn't come about all that often - despite what you see in Hollywood movies and TV shows.
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