Lawyers who won Happy Birthday copyright case sue over “We Shall Overcome”

(credit: Thomas Hawk)

"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 litigation. It's a proposed class action that seeks the return of copyright licensing fees they say were wrongfully collected by Ludlow Music Inc. and The Richmond Organization, which claim to have copyrighted "We Shall Overcome" in 1960.

According to the lawsuit, the song is much older than that. The plaintiffs say the song is based on "an African-American spiritual with exactly the same melody and nearly identical lyrics from the late 19th or early 20th century."

At most, they say, the defendant companies own specific arrangements of the song, or additional verses that were added in 1960 when the song was copyrighted and again in 1963.

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