It’s long been obvious to anyone who took a serious look that the claimed copyrights on “Happy Birthday” are invalid. That hasn’t stopped Warner Music from extorting user fees on the order of two million dollars a year, though. Now, happily, a federal judge has put a stop to the nonsense and ruled that none of the companies that have collected royalties on the song held a valid copyright.
The judge ruled a 1935 copyright covered only a specific piano arrangement and not the song itself. Warner can appeal, of course, but they haven’t announced their intentions. I’d be surprised if they do. The thing about sketchy copyright claims like this is that they only work because the claimed royalties are too small to make litigation cost effective. Once someone takes them on, the house of cards falls.
On the other hand, they may have to pay back all those royalties they’ve collected over the years so they do have a financial incentive to appeal. We’ll see what happens, but in the mean time “Happy Birthday” is free.