The Battle Over Pooh is Over

After 16 long years of being tugged into one courtroom after another, Winnie the Pooh can now rest easy in Pooh's Corner.

A California appeals court ruled today that Pooh (and more importantly, his royalties) belong to the Walt Disney Company, Bloomberg reports. The judge affirmed a lower court's ruling to dismiss the case brought by Stephen Schlesinger, Inc. against Disney in 1991 over the merchandising revenue generated by the lovable bear. The court threw out the case after it determined that Schlesinger had illegally obtained evidence for its case from Disney's garbage.

The story goes like this:

Once upon a time, in 1930, a man named Stephen Schlesinger bought the rights to the Pooh character from his creator, A.A. Milne. Schlesinger died in 1953. In 1961, his widow, Shirley Schlesinger, licensed Pooh's rights to a man named Walt Disney in exchange for royalties.

Disney paid Schlesinger royalties for years, while children enjoyed getting to know Pooh and all of his friends. But Schlesinger accused Disney of stiffing her family on the true amount of money it owed. So it used the royalties it did receive to wage a legal battle against the media giant.

But the media giant did not back down. In fact, it fought until the bitter end.

And now, Winnie the Pooh can live happily ever after next to Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy.

And Disney shareholders can breathe a sigh of relief that it won't have to fork over hundreds of millions of dollars in Pooh money.

The end.

by Megan Barnett