Note, Warner doesn't even seem to know how to respond viably to this.
Their response was:
"Warner/Chappell says there's there no indication the Hill family was aware of the book nor authorized it. They write the "evidence instead shows that Summy sought and obtained a license to publish the Happy Birthday to You! lyrics" in 1935 — and "Summy would not have had to secure a license from Jessica Hill if it already had the rights to Happy Birthday to You! or if the work had fallen into the public domain.""
As a lawyer, i can tell you "this isn't going to fly". Their argument is essentially "someone felt they needed to pay for it 13 years later than the evidence found, so it can't have fallen into the public domain".
This isn't a good legal argument in the slightest, since people pay for stuff they don't need to all the time. The fact that someone was willing to give money will, in fact, have no bearing on the legal validity of the claim :)
To give an idea how bad this argument is, and how common it is to try to pay after expiration of rights:
This happens all the time in patent cases, where people used to agree to pay for patents after they expired. For a while it has been simply unlawful per-se. Supreme court might take it up again this term: http://www.goodwinprocter.com/Publications/Newsletters/Clien...
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 17.1 ms ] thread"Warner/Chappell says there's there no indication the Hill family was aware of the book nor authorized it. They write the "evidence instead shows that Summy sought and obtained a license to publish the Happy Birthday to You! lyrics" in 1935 — and "Summy would not have had to secure a license from Jessica Hill if it already had the rights to Happy Birthday to You! or if the work had fallen into the public domain.""
As a lawyer, i can tell you "this isn't going to fly". Their argument is essentially "someone felt they needed to pay for it 13 years later than the evidence found, so it can't have fallen into the public domain". This isn't a good legal argument in the slightest, since people pay for stuff they don't need to all the time. The fact that someone was willing to give money will, in fact, have no bearing on the legal validity of the claim :)
To give an idea how bad this argument is, and how common it is to try to pay after expiration of rights:
This happens all the time in patent cases, where people used to agree to pay for patents after they expired. For a while it has been simply unlawful per-se. Supreme court might take it up again this term: http://www.goodwinprocter.com/Publications/Newsletters/Clien...