A 13-year royalty lawsuit between The Walt Disney Co. and Stephen Slesinger, Inc. ended abruptly this week in Los Angeles, according to news reports.
Stephen Slesinger, Inc., a family-owned company that controls some of Winnie the Pooh merchandise rights, claimed that Disney owed it hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties. The judge dismissed the case, citing the accuser’s use of a private detective hired to retrieve confidential Disney documents from the company’s trash without notifying Disney lawyers.
In its suit, Tampa, FL-based Slesinger claimed that Disney had underpaid royalties owed under the 1983 renewal of a licensing agreement originally struck in the early 1960s. Slesinger claimed that Disney should have been paying royalties not just on plush and other merchandise, but also on sales of VHS tapes and DVDs, products that either didn’t exist or weren’t explicitly included in the 1983 deal, the reports said.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Charles W. McCoy Jr. dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning Slesinger can’t bring legal action on the same claim again.
Winnie the Pooh, the lovable character created by author A.A. Milne and illustrator E.H. Shepard in the 1920s, means big business for Disney. Annual retail sales of Pooh merchandise are $5.9 billion, surpassing sales of Disney’s trademark character, Mickey Mouse. Disney has said that losing the case would have cost hundreds of millions of dollars, at a minimum.
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