Happy Birthday to You
The American copyright status of "Happy Birthday to You" began to draw more attention with the passage of the Copyright Term Extension Act in 1998. The Supreme Court upheld the Act in "Eldred v. Ashcroft" in 2003, and Associate Justice Stephen Breyer specifically mentioned "Happy Birthday to You" in his dissenting opinion. American law professor Robert Brauneis extensively researched the song and concluded in 2010 that "it is almost certainly no longer under copyright." Good Morning to You Productions sued Warner/Chappell for falsely claiming copyright to the song in 2013. In September 2015, a federal judge declared that the Warner/Chappell copyright claim was invalid, ruling that the copyright registration applied only to a specific piano arrangement of the song and not to its lyrics and melody. In 2016, Warner/Chappell settled for $14 million, and the court declared that "Happy Birthday to You" is in the public domain.