Law

In the late ’60s, the government sought to adopt O Canada as the national anthem. The music and original French lyrics had passed into the public domain, but the English version was still under copyright. The government settled the rights for a dollar.

Ironically, the copyright to the English lyrics would have expired anyways by the time the National Anthem Act was finally passed in 1980.

Crayola has a trademark on the smell of its crayons. The odour is described in the Canadian trademarks registry as:

A unique scent of a pungent, aldehydic fragrance combined with the faint scent of a hydrocarbon wax and an earthy clay.

Trademark 1986544

In Canada, a trademark can be anything that is used by by a seller to distinguish their goods or services from those of others, including

a word, a personal name, a design, a letter, a numeral, a colour, a figurative element, a three-dimensional shape, a hologram, a moving image, a mode of packaging goods, a sound, a scent, a taste, a texture and the positioning of a sign.

Trademarks Act

Unfortunately, I have not been able to find records of anyone litigating over a scent trademark.

The American copyright status of the song “Happy Birthday to You” has finally been resolved in the case Rupa Marya v. Warner Chappell Music. (Here in Canada, the song has been in the public domain since 1997.)

At the time of lawsuit, Warner was collecting royalties — around $2 million a year — for “Happy Birthday to You” despite the fact that the melody was in the American public domain. They claimed that the lyrics were still under copyright and that they owned the rights to them.

Although Warner had acquired some “Happy Birthday”-related rights, it wasn’t clear what those rights covered since the original transfer agreements had been lost. The judge ruled that the secondary sources did not support Warner’s claim on the lyrics specifically, assuming they were still under copyright at all. Settlement terms following the summary judgement definitively assigned the song to the American public domain.

As far as I can tell, the European copyright to both the “Happy Birthday” lyrics and melody would have been still valid, albeit with disputed ownership, until it expired in 2017.