Disney reveals depth of deep Pooh

Disney's latest SEC filing reveals that the company will owe AA Milne's agent's heirs hundreds of millions of dollars if a court finds that they are indeed the exclusive owners of the merchandise rights to Pooh-Bear, as a recently discovered document indicates.

A lot of the blog coverage of this issue has implied that Disney ripped off Milne or his heirs, but that's simply not the case. In 1983, Disney licensed Pooh from Milne's heirs — the plaintiffs in this case are Milne's agent's heirs, who discovered a document left behind by the late agent in which Milne signed over the merch rights in perpetuity to him.

So Disney was acting in good faith — until, that is, it shredded a bunch of boxes of documents related to the case, shortly before they were subpoenaed. I wonder if they'll sue Milne's heirs for falsely representing their ownership of the merch rights to Pooh?

"If each of the plaintiff's claims were to be confirmed in a final judgment, damages could total as much as several hundred million dollars and adversely impact the value to the company of any future exploitation of the licensed rights" for Pooh merchandise, according to the filing. Slesinger's heirs claim Burbank-based Disney has cheated them out of $200 million in royalties since 1983 from Pooh-related videos, DVDs, computer software and popular Pooh attractions at theme parks. Disney contends that it has fulfilled its royalty obligations under a 1983 contract.

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