We're going to talk today about expired copyright. And now that might seem simple but it's actually a little bit more interesting than you might expect. It's an important defense. You look and say, has copyright expired? You use a variety of defenses, of course, fair use, big important area. You might be able to use first sale, you might be able to have performance rights limitations but expired copyright is also an important area as well as consumer goodwill and other areas of copyright limitations. So today, we're focusing on expired copyright. We're gonna talk about an example of expired copyright, a movie called It's a Wonderful Life produced in 1946. Now, I know you're probably thinking, "Oh man! That's so old. That's ancient." Yeah, it's before I was born so it's really old but it's a great movie. You should watch it. Now, actually this is one of my favorite movies of all time. This is a wonderful movie. It's not an action movie. This is not Jackie Chan. It's not a comedy. It's not, it's not James Bond. It's not an action thriller. It's not fast and furious. It's a romantic, touching movie. It's the kind of movie my wife and I refer to as a chick flick. A movie that touches your emotions and that leaves you crying by the end. Yeah, I'll admit it, guys cry to, some guys, I did. And so, you know it's very touching and it's very emotional. It's a wonderful movie. Now I also like the action movies. I also like to go see John Wick shoot everybody up and other things like that but sometimes, I like the romantic movie with the emotion close to the surface and this is a great classic in that area. Originally this movie was not a success in the theater. Didn't work. I don't know. Maybe it was the end of the war, 1946. Maybe there were other hit films out. I don't know why it wasn't an original success but it was a good movie. So, not all movies that are great and great classics are great at the time they're released. There may be a variety of reasons but it didn't make much money in the theaters, didn't sell a lot in DVDs, so it wasn't that big a deal. And when it came up for renewal after 28 years, and at this time copyright lasted for 28 years plus you could renew for another 28 years, the studio forgot to renew it. A secretary or an assistant made a mistake and they didn't send the paperwork in, so therefore, the movie didn't get renewed. You only have one year to file the renewal and if you don't, it's not renewed. So copyright expired. Now, TV stations find this movie. If they're looking around and saying, "what could we show during a holiday when there's not a lot of viewers, people won't pay a lot for commercials, what could we show that's cheap or what could we show that's free, we don't have to pay anything for the content," and they found this movie. They said, "Oh great, let's schedule this one, it's free I don't know if it's good or not but let's give it a shot." People loved it and they said, "Oh, that was such a great movie I want my friend to see it. When are you going to show it again?" This is a studio said, "Whoa, okay. It's free and people like it. Great, this is perfect. Okay, we'll show it again. Next holiday we'll queue it up again." Bigger audience, more viewers, bigger hit. It got to where they'd show it in big time because this was a classic and other stations would show it. Sometimes you could find three or four stations showing the same movie because you don't have to pay anything for it. So it's a great filler of air time and because it was frequently on the air for a number of years it became a huge hit, a huge, almost a cult classic or cult following. People tell their friends, they tell their friends. Not only is it free on the airways to air for the studios but you can also get it really cheap with Amazon or other things because it's out of copyright. So, you can make a copy, sell it on Amazon or other places, and it's cheap. And so, big hit. Now, this is success but because it's expired copyright, you don't make any money. So that's a little disappointing. But there was an interview with the director of the film Frank Capra who said, "I'm delighted with the fame. I don't care about the money. I'm actually pleased that the studios made a mistake. I'm glad they didn't renew it. I got lucky. They made a mistake. Now I'm famous because my film is finally getting the recognition it should have had." So he's excited, he's pleased and he says actually other movies by me are selling much more because people see this free movie, It's a Wonderful Life and they say, "I love that director. I wonder what else he has filmed." So, you know, you see a movie you really like and you say, "Ooh, who is that director? What else has he done? Maybe I would like that because I like this." And so his other films are selling more. So he's actually making money because they gave away intellectual property. This is an important concept because the purpose of copyright is to make money. That's why we have it. It's not to motivate artist, oh well, that's part of it and part of the origin of the law. But the big purpose behind copyright is corporations making money by giving away the IP rights to one product, they sold more of other products. Giving away samples is a way to make money so it's an important business concept. You don't always maximize your income by perfectly protecting your copyright. Sometimes you may give away samples or versions or trials and make more money that way. Another example of expired copyright is a copyright that didn't expire on purpose or was tried to be protected. It's actually one of the most profitable songs in the history of music. It's a very popular song. The best known song in the world is what you sing at a birthday party, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you. Now, I can sing that in this video for education or I can sing that in my home but if I sang that in a restaurant or in a public setting or in a movie for many, many years, I would have to pay the copyright holder a lot of money. They would want like $5,000 for you to perform Happy Birthday in a restaurant or $50,000 or $100,000 to perform it in a video. And they made millions, many, many millions off of this song, Happy Birthday. It was carefully protected. There were many lawsuits. There was lots of litigation about this Happy Birthday song. And recently, the song expired. The copyright expired and it was intriguing why it expired. In a court case where a company was defending against their use of Happy Birthday, this extremely profitable, very valuable licensed property, they had found an early publication, earlier than any other publication known of the Happy Birthday song. They have found in different places, one place where the words were performed or written down, not performed but published, and one place where the tune was published and they both were older than the version which had been registered for copyright. That meant the original creation of the work was older and any later variation was a variation of copyright. You could get the arrangement copyrighted but the Happy Birthday song had expired. So, even though this is a MOOC, maybe I could get sued for singing Happy Birthday. It's expired. They can't sue me. So you can't stop me. I can sing Happy Birthday to anybody I want. It's expired. Great defense, it's now public domain, anybody can use it. But it was one of the most profitable copyrighted songs in the world. So, when we talk about limitations, keep in mind, copyrights do expire. First Sale, is not the only limitation. Performance rights are also a limitation. Expired copyright is a limitation. And in our next session we'll talk about goodwill and why even if you have all the legal rights in the world, you may lose by protecting your copyright and win by not protecting. Thank you very much. We'll look forward to seeing you in our next session.
