The Walt Disney Co. lost a round at the U.S. Supreme Court in a 15-year-old legal feud with the company that owns the merchandising rights to Winnie the Pooh characters.
The court, without comment, turned away an appeal by Clare Milne, granddaughter of Pooh creator A.A. Milne. She and Disney have been working together to wrest rights away from Stephen Slesinger Inc., which traces its stake in the Pooh characters to a 1930 agreement with A.A. Milne.
Disney, based in Burbank, Calif., was seeking to end its obligation to pay royalties to Slesinger. In a separate case, Slesinger contends Disney underpaid royalties by hundreds of millions of dollars over the past two decades.
English author A.A. Milne sold the rights to his Pooh creations in 1930 to Stephen Slesinger, a New York literary agent. When Slesinger died in 1953, the rights passed to his widow, Shirley. In 1961, she agreed to license the rights to Disney in return for a cut of the company's revenue from merchandise sales.
At the Supreme Court, Clare Milne sought to invoke a provision in federal copyright law that lets family members of authors recapture the rights to works that prove unexpectedly popular.
A federal appeals court said that legal provision didn't apply because of a 1983 renegotiation of the Pooh rights. That agreement involved Disney, the Slesinger company and Christopher Robin Milne, who is A.A.'s son and Clare's father.
Disney, which didn't formally take part in Clare Milne's appeal, is paying her legal expenses, Slesinger said in court papers. The copyrights for Milne's four Pooh books expire about 2020. A Disney spokesman said Monday that the company had no comment on the court's ruling.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/busi...794.story?coll=orl-business-headlines-tourism
The court, without comment, turned away an appeal by Clare Milne, granddaughter of Pooh creator A.A. Milne. She and Disney have been working together to wrest rights away from Stephen Slesinger Inc., which traces its stake in the Pooh characters to a 1930 agreement with A.A. Milne.
Disney, based in Burbank, Calif., was seeking to end its obligation to pay royalties to Slesinger. In a separate case, Slesinger contends Disney underpaid royalties by hundreds of millions of dollars over the past two decades.
English author A.A. Milne sold the rights to his Pooh creations in 1930 to Stephen Slesinger, a New York literary agent. When Slesinger died in 1953, the rights passed to his widow, Shirley. In 1961, she agreed to license the rights to Disney in return for a cut of the company's revenue from merchandise sales.
At the Supreme Court, Clare Milne sought to invoke a provision in federal copyright law that lets family members of authors recapture the rights to works that prove unexpectedly popular.
A federal appeals court said that legal provision didn't apply because of a 1983 renegotiation of the Pooh rights. That agreement involved Disney, the Slesinger company and Christopher Robin Milne, who is A.A.'s son and Clare's father.
Disney, which didn't formally take part in Clare Milne's appeal, is paying her legal expenses, Slesinger said in court papers. The copyrights for Milne's four Pooh books expire about 2020. A Disney spokesman said Monday that the company had no comment on the court's ruling.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/busi...794.story?coll=orl-business-headlines-tourism
