I actually just discovered this on YouTube, while looking for a suitable video to send to a friend whose birthday is today: U.S. District Judge George H. King has ruled that the song is out of copyright.
Wow! Hollywood Squares will never be the same!
At long last I can publish my cover version without legal liability.
You’re infringing on the copyright of an earlier thread - Happy Birthday song is now public domain! - Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share - Straight Dope Message Board
Well then, I’m going to countersue, because that thread should have been posted in Cafe Society, where I searched thoroughly to make sure somebody else hadn’t already posted about this. 
It wasn’t affecting me much, of course, because I don’t produce any media. But it always stuck in my craw that this bit of traditional folk music was being held in copyright. Next up: Free the Great Gatsby!
Does this mean restaurants can now replace the annoying song the staff sings to birthday guests with the staff annoyingly singing the real thing? Coolcoolcool.
I still prefer this Birthday song.
My favorite birthday song is still this French dude, Julien Neel, doing a one-man barbershop quartet version of the Dapper Dans birthday song:
Oh yeah, and today was my dad's 71st fucking birthday, and I couldn't find his damn phone number ...I like this one.
It’s not just “out of” copyright, i.e. the copyright didn’t expire (wouldn’t have until about 2030), it was ruled that the copyright claim was never valid in the first place. So the gazillions of dollars they have likely collected in royalties over the years (since 1935) turned out to be just a big scam, basically.
To be precise, the court ruled that Warner/Chappell had never acquired the rights to the lyrics. There is a possibility (unlikely, perhaps) that someone else might have a legitimate claim.
I just checked. Master Shake’s Spirit Journey Formation Anniversary is still under copyright.
Can people sue them to get the money back from the past licensing now that it was ruled they never had it?
The original declaratory judgment complaint seeks both class certification and restitution.
No no no, this is the best birthday song. (There is a naughty word in it, so turn your volume all the way up if you’re at work.)
The legal principle of laches applies here. Anyone with a better claim than the one Universal had should have filed a lawsuit years ago. (And anyone with a worse claim is out of luck.)
This principle has been used in music copyright cases. One I recall (but can’t find again) involved the children of a musician seeking royalties on an old song that had been “borrowed” 30-40 years ago. The judge ruled they had taken too long to file even though the parent had recently passed. The dad should have filed earlier.
There are usually statues of limitations on damages in such cases. E.g., one can only recover damages going back 3 years before filing.
Stephen Colbert joked about this on his show the other night. He mockingly sang the substitute song the restaurant he once worked at required them to sing instead. But that is presumably under copyright and the show has to pay royalties for him singing that!
Laches is a tricky concept in copyright law. In a situation in which Warner/Chappell (and Summy and Summy-Birchard) has been asserting and enforcing its copyright claim since the 1930s. So all this time unauthorized users would not have been surprised to be faced with a copyright claim. That knocks out some of the equitable basis of the doctrine of laches. So I can’t say I know for sure how it would play out.
Of course the three-year statute of limitations would still apply.
It’s a weird situation.
IIRC, Country Joe MacDonald was saved by this principle, and may be the case of which you speak/write. His “Feel Like I’m Fixin to Die Rag” allegedly contained somebody’s parent’s walk up, from some jazz tune from 1930, or so, that coincided with the ‘One-Two-Three’ of the chorus. The plaintiff filed too late, and had to pay something like 250K in court costs.