You’ll get away with singing it with friends & family around a birthday cake, but for nearly 25 years the alleged rights to the song have belonged to the publishing wing of Warner Music. Any film, performance or even large gathering hoping to feature Happy Birthday To You are required to pay royalties to the publisher.
Films hoping to use the full song, for example, are estimated to pay anywhere from a couple of hundred dollars to $5000 (€3,800) for the privilege. Warner are said to earn around $5 million a year from the composition.
This is why budget-conscious producers will often settle on a brief excerpt of the song or the public domain alternative For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow for celebratory scenes. Unless, of course, it’s a Warner Brothers production - no prizes for guessing the studio that allowed the full-blooded rendition of the song in Batman Begins.
Not everyone is content with Warner’s monopoly on the five-word (plus one name) song, and Good Morning To You Productions are leading the biggest charge yet to have the song’s copyright removed.
Filmmaker Jennifer Nelson is one of the individuals behind the lawsuit, and was persuaded to take action while producing a documentary about the song. She told The New York Times “I never thought the song was owned by anyone. I thought it belonged to everyone.”
Origins
Happy Birthday to You didn’t originate as a birthday theme at all. The melody was instead adapted from Good Morning to All, a simple four line song from the 1800s. It was composed by two American teachers, sisters Patty and Mildred J. Hill - its simple melody designed to teach young children about music and rhythm.
Good Morning to All was first officially published in 1893, although was likely written many years earlier. It’s also said that the Hill sisters' composition was highly influenced by or actively derivative of other late-1800s songs with very similar lyrics and tunes.
Between the song’s inception and its emergence as Happy Birthday..., the history grows hazier. Thought to have been originally adapted by the students at the Hill sisters’ school in Kentucky, the ‘new’ lyrics were published in various forms during the early decades of the twentieth century in songbooks and similar publications.
The birthday variety of the song was first copyrighted in 1935 to Preston Ware Orem and Mrs. R.R. Forman under the ‘Summy Company’. The composition was protected for most of the rest of the century by a specially formed organisation called the Birch Tree Group.
The company was bought in the late 1980s by Warner Music, who have been charging royalties for its use ever since.
Copyright
In the EU, the copyright on the song is due to expire in 2016 (seventy years after the death of Patty Hill). However, in the US Warner will retain the rights to the song until 2030 - 95 years after the first copyright, with the possibility for further renewals.
There have been many arguments in favour of the song’s immediate release into the public domain. Professor Robert Brauneis of George Washington University, for example, has put together a wealth of documentation in an effort to discredit Warner's copyright claim. Brauneis maintains his research has proven Warner have no legitimate claim over Happy Birthday.
One of the arguments is that the 1935 copyright is invalid, as it applied to an adaptation of a pre-existing work rather than a wholly original composition. Others propose that the copyright only reflects a single piano variant of the song as opposed to the popular lyrical version that’s most common today.
Many different groups will be hoping the ongoing legal action will be a success for both creative and ethical reasons. With millions of royalties a year at stake, though, Warner aren’t going to let those five little words go without a fight.
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