A little wonder, every day
Happy Birthday and copyright
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AI-generated cover showing an old songbook and legal papers, a symbolic reconstruction of the song’s copyright history.
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In the United States, “Happy Birthday to You” was treated for decades as copyrighted, and Warner/Chappell collected fees for some commercial uses. In 2015, a federal court ruled that the publisher had not established its rights to the lyrics; in 2016, the court approved a settlement under which the song was placed in the U.S. public domain. So the familiar story about millions of dollars concerns past licensing fees, not a current annual payment to a copyright owner. [1, 2]