Recapturing “Winnie-the-Pooh”
on Apr 27, 2006 at 1:50 pm
This is another in a continuing series of reports on interesting new appeals to the Supreme Court. At this stage, the blog takes no position on whether the Court is likely to review the case. These reports appear only when the blog is able to obtain an electronic copy of a petition.
The granddaughter of English playright/author A.A. Milne, the creator of “Winnie-the-Pooh” and delightful children’s stories about that stuffed bear and friends, has asked the Supreme Court to clear the way for her to recapture the copyrights to four of the Pooh works with copyrights running to 2020. The four are “Winnie-the-Pooh,” a sequel “The House at Pooh Corner” and two works of verses for children, “When We Were Very Young” and “Now We Are Six.” Milne began writing the works in 1923, inspired by the childhood life of his boy, Christopher Robin Milne. The boy in the Pooh books is “Christopher Robin.”
The petition in Milne v. Stephen Slesinger, Inc. (docket 05-1332) can be found here. The Circuit Court ruling at issue can be found here.
This is an appeal by Clare Milne, basically testing the meaning of provisions written into the Copyright Act in 1976 and again in 1998, giving authors and their heirs a one-time right to nullify prior grants of their rights to others, so that they can recapture them and enjoy the benefits of an extension of the copyright’s life. The copyrights on the Pooh works had been due to expire between 1980 and 1984, but have twice been extended by the two copyright law revisions.
The appeal implies a host of issues about the scope of the right to recapture, but the question presented is limited to whether someone outside the author’s family, though holding the copyrights, has any right to defeat the recapture rights of the family. Clare Milne is seeking to wipe out a 1930 grant by her grandfather of rights to a U.S. merchandising firm, Stephen Slesinger, Inc. The Ninth Circuit ruled, however, that she no longer had any right to terminate, since a 1983 agreement between the Pooh Properties Trust, owner of the copyright under A.A. Milne’s will, and the Slesinger firm and Walt Disney Productions revoked the 1930 grant and substituted a new one.
The petition argues that the Pooh Trust had no right to do away with the 1930 grant, since it is not a part of the family and no family member is a trustee. While her father, Christopher Robin Milne, signed the agreement, Clare contends that he exercised no termination right in that deal, so none could have been.
Clare contends that the Circuit Court ruling “could cripple Congress’s policy that authors and their surviving families should ahve an inalienable one-time right to terminate prior grants and recapture the author’s initial rights.” She rejects the suggestion of the Circuit Court that she was simply after more money that she gets under the 1983 deal with the Pooh Trust. She also says the lower court was wrong in suggesting that the substitute arrangement was a great bargain for the trust beneficiaries.
The case, she adds, is not confined to the specifics of the right to control the Pooh works. The lower court, she says, has opened a loophole that will allow licensees and copyright owners other than families — such as trusts and foundations and creditors — to nullify a right Congress intended that only authors and their heirs would have. The ruling, according to the petition, is already having an impact on other cases, recently leading a federal judge to block a termination of a grant of rights to the novel “Lassie Come Home” by the daughter of author Eric Knight.
The Slesinger firm has until May 22 to file a response to the Milne appeal.
