Via The Guardian:
Many happy returns for Warner Music:
"
Despite everyone's carefree joy in singing Happy Birthday to You, this simple song puts you in legal jeopardy every time it exits your mouth. A considerable amount of money flows to the corporation that owns the copyright. But ... maybe that company doesn't own the copyright, and maybe you are in no legal peril.
Professor Robert Brauneis, of George Washington University law school, took a professional, long, deep look into these questions. This Happy Birthday matter, it turns out, is a murky mess.
Brauneis published a 69-page disquisition called
Copyright and the World's Most Popular Song. Before plunging into the legal history, evidence and arguments, he examined the history...
...
Brauneis reckons that the copyright probably expired, for various reasons, decades ago. Nevertheless, nominal ownership passed to a succession of individuals and then companies, which did and do aggressively collect fees.
The story comes with plenty of evidentiary paperwork and audio recordings. These include: filings in four federal court cases in the 1930s and 1940s; litigation filings over the management of a trust that was created to receive royalties; unpublished papers of and about Patty and Mildred Hill; probate court records in Louisville, Kentucky, and in Chicago; and records from the US Copyright Office.
Brauneis has put more than 100 items online at
http://tinyurl.com/6p3ygk for you to peruse and sing along with."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/jan/06/improbable-research-warner-music-copyright
