In its latest controversial move, the Walt Disney Company has recently acquired wordmarks on the names of several fairytale characters for literary and text based works, in addition to its wordmarks on the same names for all other purposes.
A spokesperson from Disney explained, “We felt it necessary to obtain these trademarks because while we thought the others would be sufficient to protect our characters from abuse, it turns out that people have been abusing them nonetheless.
“I, myself, have read fan-fiction where Alice from our Wonderland movie was being doubly penetrated by Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee while fellating the Caterpillar.
“We feel that this is because we decided to allow literary uses of the characters we created, and now it’s time to stop such egregious misuses of them. After all, how would it be if six year olds were to read these same stories while surfing the web?”
Hmm, where to start? First of all, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a.k.a Lewis Carrol, created the characters named in the statement, NOT Disney. So anyone who wants to should be free to use these Public Domain characters in any way they wish, including the use described.
Also, the statement about six year olds is disingenuous at best since parents should be monitoring their children’s online access, and not simply leaving this important job up to companies and the government, who, quite frankly, have shown how they do at things with the mess they’ve made of IP law.
Actually, they’re neighbors, but Pluto wasn’t in, so I left a message with Beelzebub.
@ Bee: You should be fine, just don’t state what you did anywhere the litigious Mouse is likely to see it.
@ Barb: Pluto is HADES, not Beelzebub!
This isn’t over yet. I’ve asked Beelzebub to see if Pluto wants to sue Disney for libel and copyright infringement.
We named our seven goldfish after the seven dwarfs, am I gonna get busted?