Copyrights

On December 27, 2007 in Intellectual Property

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Copyright is a form of intellectual property. It is a set of exclusive rights given to creator of a particular form of expression of an idea or information. This may include literary works, artistic works, plays, movies, songs etc. It even includes potographs, web pages and the like. Hence any information available for viewing on the internet, may be under copyright. Hence, permission must be obtained from the original creator before using the same.

On an interesting related note, the song “Happy Birthday to You” has been found to be the most popular English song, followed by “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow”. (See wikipedia.org for more details on this). The tune was originally composed by Preston Ware Orem as a work for hire for the Summy Company. At a later date, Summy Company was bought over by Warner Chappell. Hence, rights to the tune and lyrics are owned by Time-Warner Company, and is scheduled to expire in the United States in 2030. In several other jurisdictions such as Canada, the rights have expired, and is available for public use. Time-Warner (and its predecessor companies) have been active in enforcing the copyrights.

Many filmmakers refrain from using this song due to this copyright issue. Similarly, restaurants have independently developed songs to commemorate the patrons’ special day. This has been attributed to the copyright issue.

In countires where copyright expires after 70 years from the date of expiry of the author, this song is avaliable for public use from 2008, as the original author died in 1938.

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