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

from the funny-how-that-works dept

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 However, in our comments over the weekend Christopher alerted us to the news that the estate had withdrawn the copyright infringement claim, apparently citing the publicity as the reason.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...
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Filed Under: copyright, denmark, greenville, hans christian andersen, little mermaid, michigan


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  1. identicon
    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.

    ...
    ...
    ...

    what world do these people live in?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 4 Aug 2009 @ 2:06am

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

    (irrelevant to the article)

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    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.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    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.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    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!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. icon
    Travis (profile), 4 Aug 2009 @ 7:35am

    Re: Re:

    I was about to flip out when I read your comment :)

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. identicon
    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.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. icon
    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...

    link to this | view in thread ]


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