On 9/12/97, Lincoln Richman <lrichman[_at_]aaas.org> wrote:
>
> Recently, my wife and I went to dinner at a very popular national chain
> restaurant. As part of the restaurant's regular shtick, if a guest is
> celebrating a birthday, all of the waiters and waitresses gather around
> the celebrant and sing the "Happy Birthday" song ('Happy Birthday to
> you, Happy Birthday to you,' etc.).
>
> If I remember hearing correctly, this song is actually copyrighted (I
> always figured it was American-folkloric and therefore in the public
> domain, but I've been told otherwise).
>
> So, here's my question: Is the restaurant chain (we've heard the song
> sung at several of their locations) violating copyright law by singing
> the "Happy Birthday" song?
"During its century-long life, the six-word ditty has earned a staggering pounds 39 million - an incredible pounds 7,750,000 a word - as the song is repeated around the globe.
And by the time its copyright runs out in 2021, Happy Birthday should have made nearly pounds 55 million.
American sisters Patty and Mildred Hill wrote the lyrics in 1893 when they were infant school teachers in Louisville, Kentucky.
The verse was originally intended as a classroom greeting entitled Good Morning To All.
But from its humble beginnings the song has become universally recognised and has been translated into dozens of languages.
It is now among the top three most popular songs in the English language, along with Auld Lang Syne and For He's A Jolly Good Fellow.
The lyrics were copyrighted in 1935, 11 years before Patty's death, and the ownership has swapped hands in multi-million pound deals ever since.
The song generates royalties of pounds 625,000 a year for the current owners Warner Communications, who bought the rights to the simple tune for more than pounds 15 million in 1989."
The People, June 8, 1997.
"As for the question whether an infringement has occurred when a private person uses the VTR to time-shift a program for a one-time noncommercial viewing, that question falls in the same category as the question whether infringement occurs when the waiters sing " Happy Birthday" at a patron's table, or when someone makes a photocopy of a New Yorker cartoon to put up on the refrigerator. What category is that? Questions that never need to be answered. If it did need to be answered, I believe the answer would be provided by the doctrine of de minimis non curat lex - the law does not concern itself with trifles - a doctrine that is of great importance to a proper understanding of the law of copyright."
Pierre Leval, Nimmer Lecture: Fair Use Rescued, 44 UCLA L. Rev. 1449, 1457 (1997).
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