COPYCENSE

It seems that Peter Pan is due to fall out of copyright protection and into the public domain. And the character’s British copyright holders are trying their damndest to do a Disney and keep that from happening.

Disney, of course, was one of the chief proponents of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA), which Congress passed into law in 1998. The CTEA extended copyright protection another twenty years not only for new creative works, but also for existing creative works — including those (like Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh) that were about to fall into the public domain.

(Lest we always smack Big Corporate for the CTEA, let it be known for the record that the Gershwin estate — holder of the copyrights to George’s and Ira’s songs — also lobbied hard for the CTEA.)

Now we have a Reuters story that says that London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital, the entity that holds the Peter Pan copyright, is desperately seeking an author to write a sequel to the Peter Pan story; the European copyright on the story is due to expire in 2007. According to the Reuters story, royalties from Peter Pan provide "a ‘significant but confidential’ source of income."

I am unsure of what British or European Union copyright law says on this issue, but given the recent penchant for global "harmonization" of copyright laws, I am almost sure that those foreign laws have been updated to include CTEA-like provisions. (By the way, "harmonization" is just another way to say for "the U.S. needs foreign companies to make its IP laws just like ours in order to make sure that domestic creativity gets the same protection everywhere in the world.")

The irony here is that author J. M. Barrie donated the Peter Pan character to the Hospital in the late 1920s. Apparently, the hospital is not interested in being similarly charitable.

This may be occurring across the pond, but it is sooooo Hollywood.

Reuters. Author Sought So Peter Pan Copyright Never Grows Up. Aug. 23, 2004.