By: Sharon Urias, Esq.
In a 2-1 ruling last month, the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s decision that allows Disney to retain trademark ownership rights to Winnie-the-Pooh. The battle over who has ownership of Winnie-the-Pooh has been going on for more than twenty years between Disney and the Slesinger family.
Stephen Slesinger was granted exclusive merchandising rights to Winnie-the Pooh characters back in the 1930’s by Pooh’s creator, A.A. Milne. However, in the 1960’s, Slesinger and his family assigned the rights to Walt Disney Co. Then in 1983, the family agreed to take back and re-assign the rights exclusively to Walt Disney Co. After transferring the rights, a disagreement arose between the two parties over what rights the Slesinger family still retained. This agreement led the family to take legal action against Disney in 1991, which eventually led to the recent appeals court decision.
The main point of contention is that the Slesinger family claims it retained rights in Winnie-the-Pooh and is there for entitled to royalties on all Pooh DVD’s, movies and merchandising products. Disney, of course, denies this claim stating the family gave exclusive rights to Disney in the 1983 agreement. The family and Disney have been in and out of the courts and the Patent and Trademark Office many times in an attempt to iron out these disagreements.
In the decision, the court wrote, “Accordingly, the Board correctly applied collateral estoppel to prevent Slesinger from asserting a claim that its 1983 grant of rights to Disney was a license as opposed to an assignment.” Unless the case is taken to the Supreme Court, which is highly unlikely, the Slesinger family has exhausted all legal options in retaining ownership of Winnie-the Pooh trademarks.
Original story can be found here.
