If You Paid Money to Sing “Happy Birthday,” You’re About to Get a Present

As many of you know, the song “Happy Birthday” has been notoriously under copyright for years, forcing restaurants and indie films to come up with original, unmemorable ways of wishing people a happy birthday through song.

(Seriously. Sing me one happy birthday song from a restaurant. It doesn’t count if you worked there.)

But last year “Happy Birthday” was ruled to be in the public domain—in fact, it’s officially been in the public domain since 1949—meaning that Warner/Chappell owes the people who paid to sing “Happy Birthday,” instead of inventing some terrible song called “Birthday Birthday Happy Day, Clap Your Hands and Get Free Cake,” a lot of money.

As Consumerist explains:

In a Feb. 8 court filing [PDF], Warner has agreed to set up a fund that will pay out claims totaling up to $14 million.

Of that amount, a maximum of $6.25 million is earmarked for claimants who paid to use the birthday song after mid-June 2009. The remainder of the money will be used to cover claims going back all the way to 1949. Claimants in either group should expect to only recoup a fraction of what they paid to Warner and the various other publishers of the song over the years. As usually happens in a class action, the named plaintiffs will likely receive more. In this case, they are asking for between $10,000 and $15,000.

This calls for a celebration:

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