Originally Posted by
dilanesp
They could sue and win if another airline uses it as branding..
Whether another airline would want to be confused with United is... outside the scope of this thread.
One point of clarification: Copyright expired today on the original sheet music for Rhapsody, but not the
orchestrations of it. The scoring for a full orchestra dates to 1942. And now that I think about it, I can't remember how many instruments figure in United's version.
Trying to look that up did, however, lead me to this
1987 piece from the Washington Post's TV critic about United licensing Rhapsody for the first time, which he found somewhat scandalous.