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June 15th, 2013 
Peter Nolan
According to GMTY, the tune comes from a song called “Good Morning to All,”
which was composed in 1893 by sisters Mildred and Patty Hill, who sold the
rights to Clayton F. Summy.
The song in its present form was released in 1924 by Robert Coleman, setting
off a series of legal disputes.
“Irrefutable documentary evidence, some dating back to 1893, shows that
the copyright to ‘Happy Birthday to You,’ if there ever was a valid
copyright to any part of the song, expired no later than 1921,” when
Summy failed to renew it, the GMTY lawsuit says.
“If defendant Warner/Chappell owns any rights to Happy Birthday to You,
those rights are limited to the extremely narrow right to reproduce and
distribute a specific piano arrangement for the song published in 1935.”
Edited by Chris Irvine for telegraph.co.uk
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