The article is blogspam. You want this one: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130613/11165823451/filmmaker-finally-aims-to-get-court-to-admit-that-happy-birth

The article is blogspam. You want this one: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130613/11165823451/filmmaker-finally-aims-to-get-court-to-admit-that-happy-birthday-is-public-domain.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130613/11165823451/filmma... Which also has the full text of the filing. Basically they argue that the melody dates to at least 1893, first copyrighted in 1896, and that this copyright expired in 1921. The lyrics were first mentioned in a 1901 newspaper article. No attempt to copyright them is known until 1912, through a songbook in which they would not have been eligible for copyright as a new song. Although a series of copyrights were also filed in the 1930s, they were all for specific new arrangements of the melody, never for the melody itself or for the lyrics, since the melody and lyrics already existed, and the melody had already been copyrighted once and expired. If their historical research is correct, then neither the melody nor the lyrics could possibly be under copyright in the present day, and most likely could not have been under copyright even when some of the earliest lawsuits for infringement were filed; the latest the melody could have been under copyright was 1921, and the latest the lyrics could have been under copyright (from the original filing of the 1912 songbook) was 1930.