The issue has been chewed over by law students as class projects and debated by professors. It produced one little-noticed law review article: a 23-page essay in a 2003 University of Virginia legal journal that argued "there are no grounds in copyright law for protecting" the Mickey of those early films.
Roger Schechter, a George Washington University expert on copyright, called the article's argument "a plausible, solid, careful case." By contrast, a Disney lawyer once threatened the author with legal action for "slander of title" under California law. No suit was filed.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Saturday, August 23, 2008 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 59 words Type of Material: Correction
Mickey Mouse: The headline for Friday's Column One on a copyright controversy over Mickey Mouse referred to a claimed "trademark" goof. In fact, it should have said "copyright" goof. Also, the article and a graphic caption transposed the name of the company that recorded the "Steamboat Willie" cartoon. It should have said Powers Cinephone System, not Cinephone Powers System.
No one expects Disney, which declined interview requests, to surrender Mickey without an all-out legal brawl. And the cost of what has been an academic exercise would soar if moved into a federal courtroom.
"Law and equity might line up on the side of forfeiture," said Michael J. Madison, associate dean of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. But "Disney has enough ammunition on its side to dissuade all but the most well-financed competitor, or any but the most committed public-interest advocates, from challenging Mickey."
The story begins once upon a time, when a longtime Disney devotee dared awake the dragon in the Disney company's powerful legal department.
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Gregory S. Brown, 51, a former Disney researcher who has lived in the same one-bedroom apartment in Hollywood for two decades, seems an unlikely giant-killer.
Thin, pale and bespectacled, he looks the part of an obsessive archivist. He has worked little since a heart attack in 1998, getting by mostly on disability payments.
As a child, Brown was intrigued by a book on the hard slogging by Walt Disney and his brother Roy to establish themselves in the early days of film and animation. That launched a lifelong fascination with the business side of the Disney empire.
While in high school, Brown visited Disney offices to research a term paper and ended up getting hired as an assistant to Disney archivist David R. Smith in 1974. Brown helped catalog correspondence between the Disney brothers and had access to other internal records.
Brown was struck by the early disorganization of the Disneys. It took years, for example, for the brothers to decide whether their company should be a corporation, a proprietorship or a partnership.
