Warner must release "Happy Birthday"
It is one of the most played and best-known melodies in the world, but ownership has been disputed until now: Warner Music Group claimed copyright for the birthday song "Happy Birthday to You". A US federal court has now put a stop to this.
The Warner Group secured the rights in 1988 and has so far earned around two million dollars a year for the commercial use of the song. The song, written in 1893 by a musician and a nursery school teacher, two sisters from the US state of Kentucky, was first published in a book in 1924 and copyrighted in 1934 by another sister of the authors for the Clayton F. Summy Company.
Clayton F. Summy was sold in the 1930s and renamed Birch Tree Ltd. In 1998, Warner Chappell bought Birch Tree Ltd and obtained the original rights to "Happy Birthday to You".
In 2013, three documentary filmmakers took legal action against the Warner Group's claims and have now finally been vindicated. According to the collecting society Gema, "Happy Birthday to You" is only protected in Germany until the end of 2016.
