Court ruling brings happiness to those singing ‘Happy Birthday’

Next time you decide to celebrate your birthday in a public forum, you no longer need to have “Happy Birthday” sung clandestinely, or softly, or both. A court ruling in the U.S. in February has ensured that the song — the most recognised in English language [with lyrics translated into at least 18 other languages] — is about to enter public domain.

According to the court filing, the alleged copyright owner, music publisher Warner/Chappell — represented in India by Times Music — will pay US$14 million to end a lawsuit challenging its hold on the world’s most popular song.

For those interested, the history behind “Happy Birthday” goes to another song, “Good Morning To All”, which has been attributed to American siblings Patty Smith Hill and Mildred J Hill in 1893, although the claim that the sisters composed the tune has always remained moot. Patty was a kindergarten principal in Louisville, Kentucky, U.S., developing various teaching methods; Mildred was a pianist and composer. The sisters used “Good Morning To All” as a song that young children would find easy to sing. The combination of melody and lyrics in “Happy Birthday” first appeared in print in 1912, but probably existed even earlier. None of these early appearances included songwriter credits or copyright references.

The Summy Company registered a copyright in 1935, crediting authors Preston Ware Orem and Mrs R.R. Forman and, in 1988, Warner/Chappell Music purchased the company for US$25 million, with the value of “Happy Birthday” itself estimated at US$5 million. The music publisher was expecting to have “Happy Birthday” under copyright control until 2030. An intellectual property valuation expert estimated that the song would have generated additional revenues of between US$14 million to US$16.5 million by then.

Although I personally believe that “Happy Birthday” should have always been in public domain, as propagated by U.S. professor Robert Brauneis in his 2010 paper, ‘Copyright And The World’s Most Popular Song’, Walt Disney had to pay US$5,000 to use it in a Disney parade. Further, the royalties charged for a scene depicting Martin Luther King celebrating his birthday in the civil rights documentary, ‘Eyes On The Prize’, was so high that the scene never made it onto DVD when released in 2006.

But, in all this, a film producer named Jennifer Nelson filed a lawsuit against Warner/Chappell last year after she was charged US$1,500 while making a film about the song, which was including in the film. Jennifer’s lawyers correctly argued that a song that first appeared in early 20th-century children’s textbooks had to be in public domain because of its general publication, and an abandonment or the length of the copyright term [if it existed at all].

For the trivia-minded, the most recent exception to the rule of paying royalties to Warner/Chappell on the public usage of “Happy Birthday” was when the song was played on another planet — Mars, in this instance — as ‘Curiosity’ — a car-sized robotic rover exploring the Gale Crater as part of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory Mission – did so on the surface of the planet on August 6, 2013. It audibly played “Happy Birthday” in honour of the one Earth year that it took to complete its Martian landing, the first time a song had been played on another planet.

By agreeing to the settlement, Warner/Chappell avoided the demand that it should be punished for collecting licensing money for decades, guesstimated to be US$50 million, when it never had the right to do so in the first place. As part of the settlement now, the music publisher also forgoes a right to appeal. Placing “Happy Birthday” into public domain will no doubt open the floodgates to its usage and, until now, untold lakhs of people – if not more – chose not to use the song in their own performances and artistic works or to perform the song in public, limiting the number of times the song could have been performed and actually used if it was free, rather than entailing a fee!

In announcing its quarterly earnings, Warner Music Group — which is Warner/Chappell’s owner — partly blamed an operating loss on expenses related to the “Happy Birthday” settlement.

Nevertheless, with immediate effect, go ahead and proceed with a little more joy when you sing “Happy Birthday” and proceed to blow out the candles, eat that sumptuous cake, and unwrap those gifts! You can liberally do so – royalty-free and stress-free – as birthdays just got happier!

The writer has been part of the media and entertainment business for over 23 years. He still continues to pursue his hobby, and earns an income out of it.