A month or so ago, I posted a story about the Flash-animated parody of the US-Pres candidates which used a re-worked version of Woody Guthrie's folk classic "This Land (Is Our Land)". At the time, the song's publisher, Ludlow Music, threatened to sue the animators for infringement of copyright... And in the month since them, that's exactly what they did and - guess what - they lost! But it doesn't end there...
In the course of presenting of evidence, it was discovered that the song had been published eleven years earlier than previously thought, so it was already in the public domain when Ludlow initially applied for a copyright renewal back in the mid 80's. As a result, they are no longer recognised as the copyright owners and have effectively robbed themselves of eleven more years of royalties on the back of this popular standard.