In the USA, Winnie the Pooh has become a public domain
Since this year, the Winnie-the-Pooh character has become public domain in the United States. Its copyright has expired. According to US law, after 95 years, copyright protection for official works ceases, i.e. works that were created by the author as a result of the performance of official tasks. This means that from now on, anyone in the United States has the right to republish Alan Milne’s famous book about Winnie the Pooh, without obtaining permission from the copyright holders and without paying a license fee. Also, derivative works – audiovisual (films and cartoons), stage works, computer games, etc. – can be created without permission.
The character of Winnie the Pooh was one of the most profitable for the Disney studio, in the last decades the company’s annual income from its use was between 3 and 6 billion dollars. Of course, there have always been many controversies and lawsuits surrounding Winnie the Pooh, and not only in the US.
In general, it all began in 1926, when Alan Milne’s first Winnie the Pooh book was published. In 1929, the literary agent Stephen Slesinger bought the rights to commercial use of the image of Winnie the Pooh. In the 1960s, the heirs transferred these rights to the Walt Disney Company, which agreed to pay the Slesinger family a portion of the profits from sales of products created using the character. This is how cartoons, toys and souvenirs began to bring in multibillion-dollar revenues. In 1991, the Slesingers filed a lawsuit, accusing the Disney company of underpayment of the appropriate remuneration – as the lawyers claimed, the bear became more profitable for the company than another famous character – Mickey Mouse. The Slesingers not only asked the court to collect compensation in the hundreds of millions of dollars, but also to deprive Walt Disney of the rights to use the character in the United States. In turn, the company insisted that, according to the contract, the rights of the Slesingers extended only to certain types of products for which Disney paid royalties in full, and to revenues from other types of products (for example, computer games, videos) the Slesingers did not can claim
According to lawyers, the plaintiffs would have some chance of success if they acted within the law. But to prove their point, the Slesingers hired private detectives who stole some documents from Disney’s headquarters. The Los Angeles Superior Court Judge found this outrageous and punished the plaintiffs by simply dismissing their case. The ruling stated that the plaintiffs “acted dishonestly and showed no signs of remorse.” Thus, Walt Disney won the court, defending the exclusive rights to the character. Although many critics and fans of Alan Milne’s work believe that the Disney adaptation is very far from the original character of the books and not for the better.
In addition to the rights to the character, Disney at one time acquired the rights to the drawings of “Classic Pooh” from their author, Ernest Shepard, which he created while working with Alan Milne for Punch magazine, and which became the first illustrations for the bear story.
“Soyuzmultfilm” did not apply for permission to use the character either to the Schlesingers or to Disney, which had exclusive rights to the film adaptation and the drawn image of “Classic Pooh”. The visual image of the Soviet cartoon Winnie the Pooh was created by production designers Eduard Nazarov and Volodymyr Zuykov.
In general, from the very beginning, this story began with the writer-translator Borys Zakhoder. Once he was looking at a children’s English encyclopedia in the library, saw a picture of a cute teddy bear in it and was eager to read a book about him. Thus began his many years of work with Pooh. Boris Zakhoder’s manuscript translation was not accepted for a long time, but he managed to publish a book that became incredibly popular in the USSR. B. Zahoder always emphasized that his book is not a literal translation, but a retelling of Milne’s books, which corresponds to reality. In addition, not all chapters of A. Milne’s book were included in B. Zahoder’s book.
The cartoon adaptation in the USSR was made by the director of “Soyuzmultfilm” Fyodor Khitruk, who wrote the script for Winnie the Pooh together with Boris Zakhoder. There were frequent disagreements in their work together, which led to the termination of the series after only three cartoons. But even the cycle that was released became incredibly popular. According to the director, he did not know about the existence of the Disney series when he created his cartoons. And it was precisely the fact that the Soviet cartoons about Winnie the Pooh were created without obtaining the rights to screenplay from Walt Disney that made it impossible to show them abroad.
The plot and characters of the American and Soviet Winnie the Pooh are still being compared. Among the advantages of the American one is a higher quality drawing, but the Soviet one is considered more funny and unique. And thanks to the songs to the music of the composer Mechyslav Weinberg, Winnie the Pooh is considered the first cartoon rapper
Court disputes over Winnie the Pooh were not only at Disney in the USA, but also at Soyuzmultfilm. In 2017-2018. The Court of Intellectual Rights in Moscow considered the dispute over the claim of the Alvega company against Rospatent and Soyuzmultfilm about the refusal to register a trademark with the image of Winnie the Pooh. The position of the plaintiff, “Alvega” LLC, was based on the fact that the company received permission to use the images directly from the authors, artists E.Nazarov and V.Zuykov. But the court agreed with the position of Rospatent and Soyuzmultfilm, noting that it was necessary to obtain permission from the film studio to use the character and individual drawings and frames from the cartoon. In turn, the right holder, Soyuzmultfilm, is obliged to pay remuneration to authors for the use of animated films created by them.
Borys Zakhoder’s rights were also contested in court. The lawsuit was filed by the company “Nova Alternativa”, which owns the trademark “Vinni”. She stated that the writer had no rights, since he, in turn, did not receive the right to adapt the work from Alan Milne and did not enter into a contract with A. A. Milne, the publisher, or another owner of the exclusive copyright for the original work “Winnie the Pooh “. The plaintiffs asked to recognize that B. Zakhoder does not have copyright for the designations “Vinny” and “Winny”, since, in their opinion, these designations were not the result of Boris Zakhoder’s creative activity.
The court established that the copyright for the work and the word designation “Vinny” belong to Boris Zahoder, who made the original translation of A. Milne’s work. The character of B. Zahoder is not an exact copy of the character of A. Milne and has certain original features. The name Vinnie with the double letter “nn” was introduced into the vocabulary of the Russian language by Boris Zakhoder and is the original translation. On the territory of the Russian Federation, the word “Vinny” evokes an association with the character of B. Zahoder’s fairy tale.
The court also noted that at the time of creation of B.V. Author of the Russian-language version of the work by A.A. The Fundamentals of copyright of the USSR dated May 16, 1928 were effective for Milna. The Soviet Union did not participate in international treaties on the protection of copyright, the works of foreign authors were freely used, and their consent was not required for translation or other creative processing of the work. Thus, the court established that the creation of B.V. The authoring of the literary work “Winnie-the-Pooh and everything-everything-everything” was carried out in accordance with the legislation in force at that time.
Books and movies about Winnie the Pooh have been translated into 29 languages.
A Winnie the Pooh star was unveiled on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2006.
Winnie the Pooh is depicted on postage stamps of about 20 countries.
In the Forbes list, the character of Winnie the Pooh takes second place after the character of Mickey Mouse.
The sale of a drawing by Ernest Shepard – a map of the Hundred Acre Forest, where Winnie the Pooh and other characters walked, set a world record – the sketch was sold at London Sotheby’s for almost half a million pounds.
Ernest Shepard was a famous cartoonist and worked for Punch magazine for about 30 years. At first, Alan Milne was skeptical about the prospects of cooperation with this artist, but as a result, the cooperation took place. Shepard made more than 300 illustrations for books about bears.
Winnie the Pooh became a kind of creative “curse” for Alan Milne: despite the fact that he is the author of 8 novels, 34 plays, 5 documentary books and 15 short stories, readers perceived and continue to perceive him exclusively as a children’s writer.
The image for the creation of Winnie the Pooh and all his friends was soft toys that belonged to Alan Milne’s son – Christopher Robin. At the same time, Christopher Robin himself had a negative attitude towards Disney animation. After the screen adaptation, he became an object of ridicule from the students of the school. Christopher Robin didn’t like the fact that he was still a little boy from his father’s books. Following in his father’s footsteps, Christopher Robin wrote several memoirs: “Enchanted Places”, “After Winnie the Pooh” and “The Hole in the Hill”. In one of them he says: “Sometimes it seems to me that my father has reached the heights of popularity by climbing on my childish shoulders, that he has taken away my good name, leaving me nothing but empty fame.” This is a lifelong family conflict.
Thanks to the translations of Boris Zahoder, Soviet children got to know not only Winnie the Pooh, but also “Alice in Wonderland”, “Mary Poppins”, “Peter Pan”. Commenting on the question: “Why exactly was “Winnie the Pooh” such a success?”, B. Zahoder’s wife answered: “Boris gave the characters traits that Alan Milne himself did not see in them.”
In addition to Alan Milne’s book Winnie the Pooh, the list of works that have become public domain also includes Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, silent films starring Greta Garbo and Buster Keaton, opera recordings Enrico Caruso, made before 1923, and others.
A complete list is available on the Duke University website.
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Sources:
https://delo.ua/leisure/vinni-pux-stal-obshhestvennym-dostoyaniem-srok-avtorskix-prav-na-nego-i-desyatki-izvestnyx-proizvedenii-istek-390894/
https://www.fd.ru/articles/66016-vinni-puh-i-prava-cheloveka
Published: 01/28/2022