Warner will win and keep the copyright. Evidence has little bearing on this sort of thing - all that matters is money. The lawyers will want to spin it out for more billable hours, the judge will too, as having that he found in favour of Warner on his cv will help him get more lucrative work from corporations.
No, Warner will not win and the copyright will be dismissed. For far too long there have been vagaries and nuances to copyright and its extensions that utterly and completely violate the letter and spirit of the law. Copyright is a synthetic monopoly, so to speak, and this case has been high on the radar for a long time - moreso even than the Flo & Eddie issue regarding pre-1972 recordings.
The book was published in 1922. The law changed in 1923. This is as clear as possible, and Warner will lose.
My birthday is coming up, and if the decision comes out as I expect it to in time, then I'll record it myself, release it for free, and return it to the Public Domain so it can be used by whichever artist, filmmaker, business, or entity without the need to pay mechanical rights.
I'd suspect Ancient Greece at least. I would not be surprised if a variation of it was sarcastically uttered within the first week of money encountering law.
We have a legal system that is largely PTW. We do not have a justice system. Many will disagree with it because they have never been on the wrong side of the system and accepting such a harsh reality in place of their ideal fantasy is very difficult. I'm almost jealous of such individuals for, as it is said in popular culture, ignorance is bliss (when the ignorance is of a danger you can neither prepare for nor flee from).
Meh... they can afford to let this one slip. It's one copyright, it's an embarrassment, it makes them $2m a year which is chicken feed for these sorts of companies. No expensive precedents will be set. Take it on the chin and move on.
The business with (possibly) mangling the PDF, however - I don't know whether that's perjury or perverting the course of justice or neither, but somebody ought to do hard time for that.
