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MyFox Orlando | Florida Couple Faces Lawsuit From Disney
CLERMONT, Fla. — A Clermont, Fla., couple got a million dollar surprise when they received a lawsuit from Walt Disney World recently. David and Marisol Chaveco own a party business and bought two costumes that happen to resemble two Disney characters. One of the costumes is an orange tiger that looks a lot like Tigger. The other costume is a blue donkey that resembles Eyeore. About a month after the couple advertised the availability of the characters for parties they opened the mail to find the lawsuit.
“We honestly saw them as an orange tiger and blue donkey,” said Marisol Perez-Chaveco. “We weren’t trying to impersonate anything.” The Chaveco’s say they’re now trying to make things right with Disney as cheaply as possible. Disney made seven demands in the lawsuit. The couple says they’ve done everything they’ve been asked except hand over the costumes for destruction. That’s because the Chaveco’s say they returned the tiger and donkey costumes to Peru for a $500 refund. “We need that money we invested,” said Perez-Chavco. “I panicked and sent them back.” Disney wouldn’t comment about the lawsuit. The suit claims that because Disney did not authorize or license the Infringing Costume Services, it cannot control the quality and nature of the performance, the quality of the costume(s), the quality and background the individual(s) providing the performance and the quality of the content of the performance.
Nothing to see here folks.
Unless a copyright holder defends their copyrights/patents they loose them. Disney has a legal obligation to their shareholders to protect its property, just like any other company.
Lets not get started on copyright and trademark laws though….
“The suit claims that because Disney did not authorize or license the Infringing Costume Services, it cannot control the quality and nature of the performance, the quality of the costume(s)…”
What they are saying is that “We can’t charge entirely too much money for these suits.”
That’s the ONLY reason why they really care, these people weren’t going to be taking money away from Disney.
“Lets not get started on copyright and trademark laws though….”
Why not? This is plain stupid, and Disney looks stupid by reacting this way.
Since, presumably, the characters Tigger and Eeyore were actually originally written and copyrighted by A.A. Milne, why on Earth does Disney have any claim whatsoever? The characters were (presumably) public domain, and Disney is a squatter laying claim to public commons, as I see it. If the couple got a good lawyer, I bet they could get this reversed, and even win the right to use the costumes…
I’d love to see that case argued, and I might even donate some $$ to help it happen.
They weren’t public domain. IIRC Christopher Robin Milne sold the rights years ago and they were in turn sold to Disney.
This really isn’t news, as #1 pointed out. It doesn’t matter if Disney would or would not have lost money from *this* couple. Disney’s doing what the law *requires* them to do, which is to zealously guard their intellectual property. (Key word? “Zealous”) If they don’t do this, then eventually they won’t be able to defend against the appropriation of their IP when it’s *not* just a mom & pop shop that won’t “be taking money from Disney”.
Not defending Disney here – after all, it is their *zealous* legislation which led to the current terms of copyright protection, which I am entirely against. But, the law is what it is.
Typical anti-business posts in the comments here, as usual.
Disney is well within its rights to sue those attempting to profit from Disney’s property. To suggest Disney is ‘stupid’ is, well, stupid.
These people who say they happened to choose 2 characters as an orange tiger and blue donkey and didn’t see the resemblence to the Disney characters are out-and-out lying.
They look like Tony the Tiger and Barney to me. So–Disney has rights to all Tigers, Lions, and whatever an Eyore is, if not all animals? All the crap about controlling quality is just that. If they have the copyright–end of story.
Hard to write a law to allow for minimal inconsequential infringement.
Corporations.
TTFN
Doesn’t a cease and desist come before a lawsuit? But I will say the suits are a little too close to comfort on Disney’s IP.
The law requires companies to sue people who dress in costumes for a million dollars to protect their copyrights? Did not know that.
#8, only if you are smoking crack do they look like tony the tiger and Barney. 🙂
For the rest of you, As a previous worker for CTW, I know how serious that stuff does get. Sesame Street has done similar things, and most of it depends on how the idiots, sorry the people who purchased the costume marketed it. If they had marketed the characters as Tigger and Eeyore, then they were definitely infringing on the copyright Disney holds, if they weren’t, then the law gets a lot more confusing.
As far as disney’s statement about
“The suit claims that because Disney did not authorize or license the Infringing Costume Services, it cannot control the quality and nature of the performance, the quality of the costume(s), the quality and background the individual(s) providing the performance and the quality of the content of the performance.”
They are talking about the Florida couple not the makers of the costume itself. Because disney didn’t authorize/license it, they can’t take any risk in the possible ruining of the trademark. for example, lets say the person playing the tiger who looks like Tigger molests a child, guess who is the most likely organization to get sued, even though they had nothing to do with it. Yeah, it will be ]Disney for “tacitly supporting the hiring of a child molester.” Especially since any lawyer who knows his stuff will realize that the costume company probably has little to no money, whereas Disney has a small fortune.
Whether or not you agree with Disney on this, the law does force them to do this. Disney is highly aggressive on protecting their copyrights, but so are other companies, just many of them don’t happen to market themselves in quite the same manner.
Let me see….. A couple in Florida running a costume character business buy costumes from Peru and then “claim” they did not know the costumes look like Disney characters. I believe them. I also just bought the Brooklyn bridge.
How about we let Mickey Mouse go into the public domain?
Its amazing – most everything in life and marketing is copied , has been done before somewhere in time or in history never mind the recent past
What about the poor little mouse who Walt Disney befriended while working on his drawings in his garage art studio
Should not the mouse be entitled to big money ?
Snow White’s original inspiration and model was a young Icelandic women who the artist had lusted over while living in Winnipeg Canada
Should that women or her family get huge money
Its wholesale abuse by Disney like unlike the RIAA
Looks like they have no furnishings in their studio apartment. It’s time to break out the lumenal.
Copyrights cannot be lost due to any inaction. Trademarks, OTOH, must be policed actively or they can be lost.
14,15-
As usual, you and people like you are going off track in an attempt to confuse people from the original story.
The story is Disney, in the right, is actively pursuing damages for people trying to use their intellectual property for monetary gain.
Please stay on topic (if you can).
B U L L S H I T
These people were going start a business by advertising for “Orange Tiger and Blue Donkey” to do kids birthday parties? Really?
Anybody here with kids ever hear them ask to meet Orange Tiger and Blue Donkey?
Countdown to how quickly DU gets sued because of that Ricky Rat pic in 10… 9… 8…
Tigger has 2 stripes on each arm. Orange Tiger only has 2. Eeyore has a light blue tummy, not the dark burgandy of Blue Donkey.
They are similar, but not counterfeit.
If they weren’t calling the characters tiger and egor….Disney should settle. Of course acting like a creep-a-zoid would serve one set of buiness objectives while not acting like a creep-a-zoid might turn fewer people off with them.
Disney in. is just another set of legalistic land sharks. I don’t actually want to do business with them or most other companies now. I always have the feeling I need to count my fingers and toes after every deal.
It was not the intent of those who wrote and voted on the constitution to allow monopoly power over creations forever but instead for a limited time to allow the creators themselves to profit before adding to rich heritage of human culture and science.
Milne is dead, Disney is dead, their creations need to be freed from bondage to join the culture of man.
#1 “Nothing to see here folks.
Unless a copyright holder defends their copyrights/patents they loose them.”
You, sir, are a dipshit. It’s trademark that must be defended.
What I’ve gathered from the story is that this is a couple who are trying to run a small business to make a profit (the whole essence of business). They are not claiming to have created these suits whatsoever, nor were they calling the suits Tigger and Eyeore respectfully, and it appears that they have identified the company that had made them. They say that they have returned the suits to the manufacturer. This would indicate good-faith on the part of the couple, and Di$ney should be willing to settle with the couple and pursue patent infringement on the manufacturer.
The Winny-the-Pooh show may be common knowledge to American-born individuals, but if this is a foreign born couple, then it is quite possible that they had no prior knowledge of the story or characters. Kinda like watching BBC, some of the content makes no sense to Americans because of context and not being familiar with a particular situation.
If Di$ney did not issue a cease-and-desist prior to filing the lawsuit, then the couple would have had no possible way to make good with the company and settle out of court. In this case, the couple should realistically only be liable for the profits that were made as a result of any events that they worked, and the cost of the suits.
This is just another example of companies going too far to try and make money on work that they had not performed. While IP is a good thing, it is horrifically abused. Patent squatting should be punishable. I say the judge hand the patents on these characters held by Di$ney over to the couple to do with as they see fit. But alas, sweet sweet justice is ever so rare nowadays.
I have been waiting for Disney to hit me with a lawsuit for using one of there characters names as my own. I also have a costume by the same name but it does not look anything like there character other that its the same species of animal. There character is very toony where my costume is as realistic as I could make it. If I had the skill I would make it look as if I was a donkey when in costume.
I would love to see how there going to try to get around the fact that you cant copyright commonly used words. For example Coke-cola was not aloud to defend the cola part of there name. They tried and lost. I would be willing to be sued just to see how they think they are going to get around that a donkey is the name of a species of animal. What, is everyone suppose to misspell donkey so they wont be sued by Disney? I have seen that company’s that make stuffed animals are doing just that because there paranoid of Disney and there lawsuits. As for my self I say “Disney bring it on! Sue me!” *Laugh* I might just find a lawyer that will defend me for free just so that he/she can say that he/she stuck it to Disney.
If the Republicans hadn’t let corporations re-write the copyright laws, most of the Disney characters would have been in the public domain a long time ago.
We need to return our copyright laws back to where they actually help average people.
The traditional limit of about 30 years is enough time to profit off of intellectual property yet the works are often still fresh enough to still benefit the public.