Happy Birthday became public domain last month and now Warner Music want to take the rights to the song back.

On the 22nd of September it was ruled by a federal judge that ‘Happy Birthday’ had been incorrectly appropriated by Warner/Chappell Music Publishing, a Warner Music Group (WMG) subsidiary. Since 1988, when Warner/Chappell acquired copyrights to the song, Warner have claimed the song as theirs, earning roughly $2 million in annual licensing costs.

This was seen as unfair but was largely unknown until the issue came to a head when it was found that their copyright was to the melody and piano arrangements but not the lyrics. The melody was originally written to accompany the lyrics to ‘Good Morning to You’ which became ‘Happy Birthday to You’, hence the separation of lyrics and music.

Now a month since the household song became public domain Warner/Chappell are fighting to get the rights to the song back. Warner stated in court filings dated October 15th that US District Judge for the Central District of California, George H. King, had “clearly erred” on his final decision that there was no evidence Warner/Chappell owned the copyright to the song.

Warner/Chappell argued that: “Courts uniformly apply the presumption of validity where errors in registration are non-fraudulent and immaterial. That rule applies where the registration omits or misstates an author because that is an immaterial error.”

An attorney for the plaintiffs commented: “This case isn’t about the validity of the copyrights, it’s about the narrow scope of them. Judge King carefully sifted through a mountain of evidence and found no factual dispute that the copyrights covered only two old piano arrangements. They simply refuse to accept those basic facts, which judge king found were not even in dispute.”

If Warner/Chappell do manage to win back the rights to Happy Birthday again their rights to the intellectual property would still run out in 2030. Though given the revenue it’s assumed was earned by licenses to the song that would add up to about $30 million by the end of their ownership. At the moment there doesn’t seem to be a definitive answer to whether Warner/Chappell will win back ‘Happy Birthday’ but it’s safe to say it’s a controversial move.