'Happy Birthday' lawsuit demands Warner Music pay back millions in royalties

[turing]

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/57pFMWN.png[/IMG]

[QUOTE]Jennifer Nelson, a filmmaker who was producing a documentary on the song, discovered that to use the track in a single scene would cost $1,500. Although she agreed to the fee and signed a licensing deal, she's now [URL="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/nyregion/lawsuit-aims-to-strip-happy-birthday-to-you-of-its-copyright.html"]filed a lawsuit[/URL] in the hope that a New York court will invalidate Warner Music's copyright claim.
Nelson says that the song, which is an adaption of the 19th Century song "Good Morning to All," is in the public domain. A full copy of the filing, [URL="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130613/11165823451/filmmaker-finally-aims-to-get-court-to-admit-that-happy-birthday-is-public-domain.shtml"]available at [I]Techdirt[/I][/URL][I],[/I] makes for entertaining reading. The lawsuit says that "irrefutable documentary evidence" dating back as far as 1893 shows that the copyright to any part of the song expired no later than 1921.[/QUOTE]

[URL]http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/14/4429412/happy-birthday-lawsuit-demands-warner-music-pay-back-royalites[/URL]

[Zircon_]

They're coming nigga, no place to hide.

[WaLLy3K]

Warner Music is gonna look like a monkey, and smell like one too!

[carcarcargo]

Didn't futurama make a joke about this?