Warner Music Pays $14M to End 'Happy Birthday' Copyright Lawsuit

Unclear. What is clear is that Warner/Chappell don't have a valid copyright claim, but due to the history of the song/lyrics/tune other claimants could come forward and claim to own the copyright.

Happy Birthday will DEFINITELY be in the public domain in 2030, because claims of ownership seem to end in 1935, however as the Warner/Chappell claim has been debunked it might be public domain as early as 2022.

Keep in mind that "unknown owner" and "public domain" aren't the same thing. At the moment Happy Birthday isn't old enough to be public domain, there just may not be a known or established owner, so it could be "de facto public domain."

It does as of next month. Also, the settlement proceeds (after attorney's fees) will be used to compensate the most recent licensees.

In the out of court settlement, Warner agrees to allowing a judge to declare the song to be in the public domain, however, the judge will have to agree to it.

"the settlement stipulates a proposed final judgment and order that would declare the song to be in the public domain" ... "An agreement to have a judge declare the song in the public domain is no doubt unusual and will likely command some attention by the judge on review"

Why is Warner suddenly graciously agreeing to this, you may wonder: "By agreeing to the settlement, Warners avoids going to trial to determine whether it should be punished for collecting licensing money for many decades"

Disclaimer: IANAL

Included in that loss may be all future revenues that could be attributed to the 'Happy Birthday' song though, in the form of a write-off of the value of the asset.

More than the product brings in.

It's a fermata on the second beat of that measure. Holding a note doesn't mean you're changing the time signature.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermata

I'm quite sure the other measures are in 3/4 time. Here's[1] a fairly typical notation (first from google image search). The previous measure would be the descending D-B-G quarter notes with the lyrics "birthday dear" (two beats for "birthday", one for "dear").

The next bar, which is notated in that image as a F-E legato slur only notates the E as a quarter note. If that was played as it is notated, the part where you say the person's name would sound very rushed. We probably started holding the E to allow time for longer names, and it just stuck.

(I find it interesting that this image doesn't even include a fermata[2] on the E; it includes the triplets on "hap-py" which is not in the original, but rushes the name.)

Also, there is a slight syncopation-like effect when she says "4" - that's the triplet effect where three notes are played in the time of two (in this case a dotted-eighth + sixteenth taking (2/3 + 1/3) of a quarter note in time). That's after the extra beat.

[1] http://abcnotation.com/getResource/downloads/image/happy-bir...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermata