Paul Hock
Business Law 201
Professor Davenport
December 10, 2017
“Happy Birthday”
Everyday there are many new babies brought into this world. One year after, families
gather together again to celebrate the birth of the baby. There is ice cream, candles, cake,
singing, and wishes. Well today, my wish is to be able to sing happy birthday without breaking
any copyright laws.
The Happy Birthday song has been around for almost a hundred years and has a long
history of battles. Patty and Mildred Hill wrote the melody to this famous song, but it was first
sung as, “Good Morning to You”. Or at least this is the dispute. Who really owns the rights to
Happy Birthday to You. Well, currently Warner/Chappell Music Inc., holds the title to this song
and they rake in millions of dollars each year from thousands of companies in licensing fess who
want to publicly use the song. Knowing this, lets talk about how Warner/Chappell Music Inc.
grabbed the title to the most sang song in the world.
As stated above, Patty and Mildred Hill wrote the sheet music to “Good Morning to You”
and copyrighted this in 1893. The legend is that, Patty and Mildred were at a family get together
and substituted the words “Happy Birthday to You” in their original song “Good Morning to
You”. From there on the song began to become famous and was sang in almost every household.
The Summy Company, seized the opportunity to collect on the use of this song. So they claimed
the copyright to the song in 1935 by writing a few piano variations of the song to cover their
bases. Then in 1988, Warner/Chappell Music Inc., purchased the rights of the song from Summy
Company.
Per Warner’s property rights to the song, they forced companies to pay appropriate
licensing fees for the use of the song. Warner Music, got away with this crime for many years. It
was not until 2013, when Jennifer Nelson, a free lance movie maker decided to make a movie
about the history of the Happy Birthday song. Warner/Chappell, did what they have always
done. They required Nelson to pay a $1500 licensing fee to be able to use the song. Which, she
