Whose mouse is it anyway?

Welcome to the wonderful world of copyright law.

--

Brown leapt on the ambiguity, asking the court to reconsider its ruling against him on grounds that Mickey Mouse was out of copyright. But he was too late. Without ruling on the merits of Brown's arguments, the judge tossed it aside as untimely.

It was not the end. Debate over Mickey's copyright status simply changed settings.

Arizona State University professor Dennis Karjala, a Brown acquaintance, suggested that one of his law school students look into the claim as a class project. Lauren Vanpelt took up the challenge and produced a paper agreeing with Brown. She posted her project on the Internet in 1999.

Across the continent, a Georgetown University law student stumbled on Vanpelt's paper more than a year later. "I just came across it," recalled Douglas Hedenkamp. "I was intrigued."

Hedenkamp examined copyright registration forms at the Library of Congress. He went to UCLA's archives and watched old shorts, noting the same title cards. He agreed: They revealed an excess of ambiguity.

Today, title-card claims are no longer required. But when courts rule on historical copyright issues, they follow the laws in place at the time -- in this case, says Hedenkamp, the 1909 law requiring that the word copyright or its symbol be "accompanied by the name of the copyright proprietor" -- a rule scholars said means in the immediate proximity.

The authoritative legal treatise "Nimmer on Copyright" says that a copyright is void if multiple names create uncertainty, and courts have agreed. In 1961, a federal judge in Massachusetts cited the "accompanied by" rule in throwing out a copyright claim by newspaper cartoonist Art Moger. Moger's name was included in the title above his panels, but the name of another artist ran inside the boxes.

"The fact that [Moger's] name is prominently displayed . . . does not, by any means, rule out the possibility" that the other artist is the copyright holder, the judge wrote.

Hedenkamp finally wrote to Disney's in-house lawyers, an attempt to satisfy his curiosity. Had he missed something? Or was there really a problem with Mickey's copyright?

Disney legal advisors were not amused. General Counsel Louis Meisinger wrote back that it would be "inconceivable that any modern court would find any confusion about the identity of the proprietor of Mickey Mouse cartoons."