James Steven, a spokesman for Warner Music Group, which owns the music publisher, said the company doesn't comment on pending litigation. Nelson's lawyers say they have "irrefutable documentary evidence, some dating to 1893," showing that if Warner/Chappell owns the right to anything, it is only to a couple of long-forgotten piano arrangements for Happy Birthday published in 1935. The sisters have no surviving family members. Happy Birthday generates an estimated $2 million a year in licensing fees, part of which goes to a children's education organization designated by the Hill family. One of Nelson's lawyers, Mark Rivkin, said as Nelson did more and more research on the song's roots, "she got madder and madder and madder." "I hope to return it to the public where it rightfully belongs."
#Black happy birthday song movie#
"It is shocking that someone claims to own it and others therefore have to pay a fee to use it," Jennifer Nelson, the movie company's president, said in a statement released by her lawyers. the world's third-largest music publisher - to return millions of dollars in licensing fees it has collected from thousands of companies and individuals who have publicly used or sung Happy Birthday.
Good Morning to You Productions, which is making a movie about the song's history, is asking the court to declare the song in the public domain and force Warner/Chappell Music Inc. That question may finally be settled, courtesy of a lawsuit filed last week in federal court in New York by a documentary filmmaker challenging the tune's copyright. It has been sung in 143 movies, translated into at least 18 languages and used in ads to sell everything from insurance to margarine.īut was one of the world's most popular songs really written by Louisville sisters Patty and Mildred Hill in the 1890s? It is the most frequently sung song in the English language, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, surpassing the works of Bach, Beethoven and the Beatles, says the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Watch Video: 'Happy Birthday:' Dispute over the copyrightĮvery 5-year-old knows it.
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