"Happy Birthday to You" is one of the most widely recognized songs in the world.  Did you also know that the song brings in about $2 million per year to the copyright holders?  Ever wondered why they sing something other than "Happy Birthday to You" at your favorite restaurant? All your questions about this ubiquitous song are answered below (including questions you didn't know you had!).  Here's your "5 Question Guide" to "Happy Birthday to You":   1. You mean "Happy Birthday to You" isn't in the public domain? No, the song is still under copyright protection in at least the United States and Europe, and continues to bring in substantial licensing fees every year.   2. So what does that mean? Do I owe someone money for singing on Grandma’s birthday? Probably not.  The U.S. Copyright Act grants certain rights to copyright holders, one of which is the right to control when the work is performed “publicly.” A performance is considered “public” when the work is performed in a “place open to the public or at a place where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances are gathered.” A performance is also considered to be public if it is transmitted to multiple locations, such as through television and radio. So, unless you sang Happy Birthday in a public place for others to hear, or broadcast it to the public, you don’t need to write a check.  Singing Happy Birthday with friends and family in your home is just fine. Notably, this is the reason that most restaurants have their own lyrics and music to perform for a customer’s birthday; singing Happy Birthday to You would constitute a public performance.   3. Who wrote "Happy Birthday to You"? Most agree that the song is a variation of “Good Morning to All,” a children’s song written and composed in 1893 by sisters Patty and Mildred J. Hill of Louisville, Kentucky.  Exactly who modified the original song is unclear.   4. Who owns the rights to "Happy Birthday to You"? The rights are currently owned by Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.  According to some reports, the company brings in as much as $2 million a year from licensing the song for public performances in movies, television, radio, as well as live performances.   5.  So when can I sing “Happy Birthday” in public? The song will not officially enter the public domain in the United States until 2030, or 95 years after publication (a term that has been extended several times by the Copyright Act of 1976 and the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998).  The song will enter the public domain in Europe in 2016, or 70 years after the death of Patty Hill (who died May 25, 1946). However, some believe that Happy Birthday may already be well within the public domain in the U.S.  For an extensive and thorough analysis of the history and copyright status of “Happy Birthday,” see the research paper by Robert Brauneis at SSRN (“Copyright and the World's Most Popular Song”).  

The Obama administration has taken a step towards its goal of ensuring public access to federally funded research.  In a policy memorandum released on February 22, 2013 (see "Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research"), the Office of Science and Technology Policy  has directed Federal agencies with more than $100M in R&D expenditures to develop plans to make the published results of federally funded research freely available to the public within one year of publication and requiring researchers to better account for and manage the digital data resulting from federally funded scientific research.  The memorandum is in part a response to a We the People petition signed by over 65,000 people requesting better access to taxpayer-funded research. The policy memorandum states that digitally formatted scientific data resulting from unclassified research supported wholly or in part by Federal funding should be stored and publicly accessible to search, retrieve, and analyze. For purposes of the memorandum, data is defined, consistent with OMB circular A-110, as the digital recorded factual material commonly accepted in the scientific community as necessary to validate research findings including data sets used to support scholarly publications, but does not include laboratory notebooks, preliminary analyses, drafts of scientific papers, plans for future research, peer review reports, communications with colleagues, or physical objects, such as laboratory specimens. Six-month Deadline to Provide a Plan Within 6 months from the issuance of the policy, each affected federal agency must provide a plan that provides for the following:

• a strategy for leveraging existing archives, where appropriate, and fostering public/private partnerships with scientific journals relevant to the agency’s research;

• a strategy for improving the public’s ability to locate and access digital data resulting from federally funded scientific research;

• an approach for optimizing search, archival, and dissemination features that encourages innovation in accessibility and interoperability, while ensuring long-term stewardship of the results of federally funded research;

• a plan for notifying awardees and other federally funded scientific researchers of their obligations (e.g., through guidance, conditions of awards, and/or regulatory changes);

• an agency strategy for measuring and, as necessary, enforcing compliance with its plan;

• identification of resources within the existing agency budget to implement the plan;

• a timeline for implementation; and

• identification of any special circumstances that prevent the agency from meeting any of the objectives set out in this memorandum, in whole or in part.

Further, each agency’s public access plan must, among other things, also:

• ensure that extramural researchers receiving Federal grants and contracts for scientific research and intramural researchers develop data management plans, as appropriate, describing how they will provide for long-term preservation of, and access to, scientific data in digital formats resulting from federally funded research, or explaining why long-term preservation and access cannot be justified; and

• allow the inclusion of appropriate costs for data management and access in proposals for Federal funding for scientific research.

Stay Tuned As this public access policy will affect university researchers and contract administrators, becoming and maintaining familiarity with the policy is important.  We will post periodic updates as more information becomes available about the policy and the various agency plans released for implementation of the policy.

At the Chronicle of Higher Education website, Paul Basken reports that new rules will be published in the Federal Register concerning corporate ties of researchers and required disclosures relating thereto. In a nutshell:

The final form of the changes falls short of some of the more aggressive regulations suggested by Dr. Collins and the NIH. In particular, the rules do not require universities to post online details of the specific financial conflicts involving their scientists. Instead, universities are required only to respond to individual requests for such information. And, despite the fact that the rule-making process was halted a year ago following revelations that a prominent psychiatrist had escaped NIH sanctions by moving to a new university, the final language does nothing new to specifically prevent such a maneuver. 

On July 29, 2011, a Federal Circuit panel decided Association For Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics (Fed. Cir. 2011). This is an important case for patent law, as it relates to genetics. The short version is that: (i) isolated DNA is eligible for patent protection; (ii) claims directed to working with the isolated DNA, in non-specific ways, are not eligible for patent; and (iii) a claim directed to a specific method of using the isolated DNA for cancer screening is eligible for patent. It should be kept in mind that “eligible for patent” is not the same as “patentable,” and the isolated DNA and cancer screening method must still be sufficiently new and creative to sustain a valid. This decision is reported more fully in a Bond, Schoeneck & King Information Memo. One interesting aspect is that people who work for universities appear on both sides. This is a nice thing about patent law, generally, and it is something that carries over into the slice of patent law dominated by research universities – there is not really a “Patent Plaintiff’s Bar” and a “Patent Defendant’s Bar.” Patents are a double edged sword, and a research university could find itself on either side of a given patent, for or against. This really brings some balance, nuance and moderated synthesis to patent law that one doesn’t always find in other areas of the law. The Association For Molecular Pathology case is a good example of this, whether or not one agrees with where exactly the Federal Circuit has drawn the line on the patent-eligibility of DNA and its associated scientific and medical methods.

At Inside Higher Ed, Paula M. Krebs writes:

The institution to which I was attached, the five-campus University of Massachusetts system, understands its role in its state and region in terms inherited from the Morrill Act of 1862, which established the land-grant colleges and their obligation to train state residents in new techniques of agriculture. The current manifestation of the Morrill Act would seem to be in the university’s commitment to commercial ventures, patents, and intellectual property, helping to start and support new businesses that grow out of research done on campus.

Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.