Overcome

Lawyers Who Won Happy Birthday Copyright Case Sue Over “We Shall Overcome”

“We Shall Overcome,” a song that was the “unofficial anthem to the civil rights movement,” was wrongly placed under copyright and should be put in the public domain, according to a lawsuit filed today in federal court. The complaint (PDF) was filed by the same group of lawyers who succeeded at putting the world’s most famous song, Happy Birthday, into the public domain after years of …


“Happy Birthday” Legal Team Seeks to Free “We Shall Overcome” From Copyright

Fresh from a $14 million victory that had Warner/Chappell backing off from ownership claims over “Happy Birthday to You,” the attorneys at Wolf Haldenstein now have chosen their encore with a new lawsuit that seeks to establish that the worldwide famous protest song, “We Shall Overcome,” is conclusively in the public domain. The putative class action, filed Tuesday in New York federal court …