Disney Loses Legal Battle Over Rights to Winnie the Pooh

Posted on February 20, 2007

The Walt Disney Co. has lost a court battle over the copyright to the character of Winnie the Pooh.

A US federal judge in California granted Stephen Slesinger Inc., which claims the rights to Winnie the Pooh, a "summary judgment" that effectively ends Disney's efforts to take back the copyright, said attorney Barry Slotnick. "The court once again has once ruled that Disney's claims against Slesinger are improper," Slotnick said in a statement.

"Now that Disney's misguided claims have been dismissed, we can focus on pursuing Slesinger's claims against Disney for damages, trademark and copyright infringement, breach of contract, and fraudulently underpaying royalties, and seeking in excess of two billion dollars in compensatory and general damages," he said. The heirs of Stephen Slesinger, who bought the US rights from "Pooh" author A.A. Milne in 1930 and began licensing them to Disney in 1961, claim the powerful firm has cheated them out of hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties.

Slesinger's widow agreed to negotiate the rights deal with Disney after his death. A first agreement was reached in 1961 and re-negotiated in 1983. Milne's granddaughter, Claire, has sought to claim back the rights to the honey-guzzling bear with Disney's support.

The ruling by a federal district court judge in Los Angeles clears the way for Slesinger to go after billions in damages in unpaid royalties on the character.

The ruling, disclosed on the court's Web site today, eliminates a procedural hurdle to Slesinger seeking more than $2 billion in damages from Disney. Disney had tried to terminate Slesinger's rights to characters the media company has marketed for more than four decades. Slesinger acquired the rights from Milne in 1930.

"This is definitely a setback for Disney," said Carole Handler, an intellectual property lawyer with Foley & Lardner in Los Angeles. "They tried to dismantle the license of the party that has been most troublesome to them in court."

The ruling is part of a larger 16-year legal battle between Burbank, California-based Disney and closely held Slesinger that's being fought in state and federal courts and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Last week, Los Angeles-based Slesinger asked the Patent Office to cancel rights to 25 Pooh-related names obtained by Disney since 1996. Disney "was not the owner of the registered marks at the time that these filings were made," Slesinger said in a petition. The company was "at most, only a licensee."

The long-running legal battle isn't over yet, but Disney has clearly lost this round.

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