Supreme Court Declines to Hear “Winnie the Pooh” Case

The intellectual property rights to the Winnie the Pooh copyright were the subject of recent litigation, over 60 years after Pooh’s creator, A.A. Milne, died.  As reported in Justices pooh-pooh Winnie the Pooh, CNN.com (June 26, 2006), Milne licensed his copyright for the material to Stephen Slesinger in 1930. “When Milne died in 1956, he did not bequeath ownership of the copyright to his family but to a trust that later became known as the Pooh Properties Trust.” (CNN). In 1983, Christopher Robin Milne entered into an agreement with Disney and Slesinger, Inc. that read, “The Trustees [of the Pooh Properties Trust] hereby assign, grant, and set over unto [Slesinger and his company] all of the rights in and to [the Pooh works] which were transferred to [Slesinger by virtue of the 1930 grant.]”  In Milne v. Slesinger, 430 F.3d 1036 (9th Cir. 2005), the 9th Circuit said Milne’s granddaughter, who was attempting to use a 1976 copyright law to regain ownership, lacked any termination rights. The Supreme Court denied certiorari on June 26, 2006 .

Special thanks to Sara Hudman and Douglas Cowan for bringing this development to my attention.