[throwaway9324]

"I just think that its term of protection is long since expired."

Why do you think that, it hasn't been 95 years since 1935, or is that a suggestion?

"I think things like literature, theater, and so on have considerable social utility and don't care for your restriction to industrial applications."

I get that you think that, but it has no basis in intellectual property law. It's entirely the opposite, the more utility something has the less protection it gets.

[chrismcb]

Personally I think that 95 years is too long. I don't think it should be longer than the average person's life span. But there is evidence that happy birthday was published at least as early as 1912, so how can it still be under copyright?

[baldfat]

It is a broken system which does not help the artist' family but it benefits companies. This article from 2002 after Congress extended copyright from life plus 50 years to life plus 70. http://articles.latimes.com/2002/mar/03/opinion/op-tasini

[anigbrowl]

REad the lawsuit, or this summary is also good: http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2014/08/05/happy-birthday-to-you-c...

It's too complex to explain in a comment, plus it's late.

[throwaway9324]

That isn't really about the "term of protection" though, but rather the validity of the copyright claim.

[anigbrowl]

'Term of protection' == 'any valid copyright claim it might once had had or been eligible for if properly registered, as opposed to the questionable claims of the current licensors'. I don't want to type all that out every time, and I don't want to make a possibly-inaccurate claim that it was never ever in copyright because I haven't checked all the primary sources for myself.

That's why I referred you to external sources for the lawsuit, because I don't want to make definitive comments about the legal merits of either side's case in this thread - it's been a few months since I even looked through the complaint.

[throwaway9324]

I'm not sure how hard it is to say "[copyright claim] is not valid". It's kind of hard to discuss thing if you come up with your own meaning of things.