Wednesday, January 01, 2003

A new Canadian book that uses the Peter Pan character is facing a court fight. The original Peter Pan character was first first published in 1902, so the copyright should have expired. But the UK has granted a perpetual copyright to a UK hospital, and its lawyers want the US and Canada to respect that. They figure that all they have to do is to convince the court that the Peter Pan copyright origination date was after 1922, because then they could cash in on an informal Congressional agreement to maintain perpetual copyrights on Mickey and anything created later.

The US Supreme Court is currently considering the constitutionality of such ridiculously long copyrights. (Eldred v. Ashcroft)

Update: More info on the Peter Pan case here.

No comments: