Little Mermaid Statue Free To Be After Artist's Estate Didn't Expect Negative Publicity

from the funny-how-that-works dept

Tue, Aug 4th 2009 12:57am — Mike Masnick

On Friday, we wrote about how an artist's estate was going after a small town in Michigan, for daring to have a "Little Mermaid" statue to play up many of the town's Danish ancestors. There's a famous Little Mermaid statue in Denmark, and the artist's estate (the artist died fifty years ago) apparently thinks all such statues infringe on its copyright (even though this statue was very different). However, in our comments over the weekend Christopher alerted us to the news that the estate had withdrawn the copyright infringement claim, apparently citing the publicity as the reason. Apparently, being a copyright bully can have a bit of a backlash...

Filed Under: copyright, denmark, greenville, hans christian andersen, little mermaid, michigan

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Chargone, 4 Aug 2009 @ 2:00am

how surprising. people don't like it when you complain about stupid things, or attempt to force them to do stuff that makes no sense.

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what world do these people live in?
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Anonymous Coward, 4 Aug 2009 @ 2:06am

I've got an idea... let's all carry ID cards!

(irrelevant to the article)
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Anonymous Poster, 4 Aug 2009 @ 5:00am

I'm very glad the estate dropped their claim. I'd hope that the last thing in the world they wanted was to be seen as some sort of bully.
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- Sean T Henry, 4 Aug 2009 @ 7:54am
  
  Re:
  In related news the Little Mermaid statue came to life yesterday, and beat a Six year old girl for not paying for the the rights to want to be a mermaid.
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Anonymous Coward, 4 Aug 2009 @ 6:16am

I'm sure they were just trying to protect the estate from becoming generic. It's sad that public opinion has once again stood against the right decision.
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- Anonymous Coward, 4 Aug 2009 @ 6:17am
  
  Re:
  sarcasm tag belongs up there, I went to far emulating a real tag and it was lost!
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  - Travis (profile), 4 Aug 2009 @ 7:35am
    
    Re: Re:
    I was about to flip out when I read your comment :)
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brenadine (profile), 6 Aug 2009 @ 11:52am

Dropped the case b/c it's probably public domain
Reason why the suit was dropped is likely because the statue is in the public domain...

"copy" was installed in 1994
Original scultpture was unveiled in 1913 in Denmark

Even if copyright was restored in URAA, they would be required to file a NIE, since the town was using it before the URAA agreement and the 1994 sculptor would have relied on the 1913 sculpture being in the public domain. The town would have a 12-month grace period from the NIE to remove or negotiate with copyright holder under URAA rules for derivative works.

At any rate, generally, for works created before 1978 the copyright term is only 95 years from publication if copyright is restored under URAA, so 1913+95=2008 so the thing has probably been in public domain in US for a year now...
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