Here's a quick post for those of you that like to geek out on copyright and legal stuff. Via a post at The Patry Copyright Blog here is a paper titled "Copyright and the World's Most Popular Song" by Robert Brauneis of George Washington University Law School. Wrote Patry at his blog:

The article is a tour de force of historical research as well as a probing inquiry into how copyright works that have fallen into the public domain can still command serious income through the inability of others to spend the time and money to track down the provenance of the claims to copyright in them. For those interested in the economic effects of term extension, here are some statistics Professor Brauneis offers: "In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the song generated revenues in the range of $15,000 to $20,000 per year. By 1960, the figure was closer to $50,00, and by 1970, over $75,000. But the really dramatic increase in revenue came in the 1980s. By the early 1990s, the song was generating over $1 million per year, and by 1996, reported Forbes magazine, it was 'pull[ing] in slightly less than $2 million a year.'" The Sony Bono term extension did not occur until 2 years later, 1998, while Happy Birthday, then known as "Good Morning to All," was first published in 1893, 115 years ago.

In addition, Brauneis has set up a website with documents relating to the song.

[music jobs] HR Manager at EMI NA; New York, NY.