Peter Pan is the creation of Scottish author J. Peter Pan, as most know, is a young boy who refuses to grow up, is able to fly and lives in a magical island known as Neverland. In , Barrie published another book, this one entitled Peter and Wendy.
Then some 17 years later in , Barrie would finally publish the script for the play, which he had been editing and changing the entire time. But shortly after publishing the play, Barrie did something that few expected. Since then, the hospital has funded itself in part with royalties from the many uses of the character including merchandise, books, tv shows, plays and movies.
Though Barrie would pass away in , his gift would go on to support the hospital long after he was gone. However, it would also create one of the most unusual pieces of copyright legislation. It was then that former Prime Minister James Callaghan, who was still an MP at the time, sponsored a bill that granted GOSH a perpetual extension on some of the rights to the work so they could continue to collect royalties on it. That extension, which was passed as pat of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of , read as follow:.
However, the issue became moot in when the EU moved to harmonize copyright terms for countries in the bloc. Whether it's based on a work under copyright or in the public domain, any time someone creates a new adaptation, the copyright clock on everything they added gets set to zero years. So the dialog, the visual designs, the songs, and everything else that Disney added in their animated adaptation is still under copyright in the US, and will be through 95 years.
In most other countries, it'll be 70 years after the deaths of the last director, I think, which puts it around A long time. Trademark is a different beast. There is no time limit on a trademark: as long as you use it, you get to keep it. On the other hand, trademark rights are more limited than copyrights. All they cover is the right to use certain logos and product names in certain categories of business. What can and can't be trademarked is complicated, but there aren't a lot of trademark rights to be found in Neverland.
The name Neverland has been in generic use for so long that it'd be hard to enforce as a trademark. The name Peter Pan has been registered as a trademark for things like peanut butter and bus lines , but that doesn't prevent anyone from using the name in a new novel about the character. As for putting the name in the title of a new work And if you choose to swim in those waters, you'll need to watch out for both deep-pocketed claimants to the name: GOSH and Disney.
Jump to: navigation , search. Uses some licensed material by Wikipedia editors. Category : Miscellany. Views Page Discussion View source History. A lucrative patent or a popular copyright can provide a creator's heirs with solid streams of revenue for decades. Some great artists and inventors decided that they'd rather give the rights to their best creations to charity, though.
Here are a few well-known bits of intellectual property that have found their way into charities' portfolios. Some generous souls even give away their biggest cash cows while they're still alive.
In author J. While the play had been a success, newspapers figured that the gift was worth a few thousand pounds a year. Once film took off, though, the rights became much more valuable; over 10 feature films were made from the book before the copyright expired in The copyright's expiration in wasn't totally bad news for the hospital, though; Former prime Minister Jim Callagahn worked out a special bill that allowed the hospital to continue collecting royalties from stage performances of Peter Pan within the U.
In Irving Berlin was serving the military by writing a musical for his fellow soldiers to perform. The musical Yip Yip Yaphank eventually made it to Broadway, but Berlin ended up cutting one song from the piece and forgetting all about it—a little ditty called "God Bless America.
It went unperformed for 20 years until singer Kate Smith's manager asked Berlin if the composer had a patriotic song that Smith could belt out. Berlin dusted off his forgotten gem, and it quickly became a sort of second national anthem during World War II.
Good news for Berlin and Smith, but even better news for the Scouts. Berlin gave all of the royalties from the song to the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts, and over the years the groups have made millions from the song. In Indiana University professor Rolla N.
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