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Disney Trades Person for Intellectual Property

Posted by Zonk on from the i-know-some-people-i'd-like-to-trade dept.

Dotnaught writes "Walt Disney Company's ABC has traded sportscaster Al Michaels to General Electric Co.'s NBC for cartoon character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. NBC acquired the rights to the cartoon through its purchase of Universal Studios, which itself gained ownership of the animated rabbit through a contract that Walt Disney signed early in his career. Having to sign Oswald away supposedly prompted Disney to create Mickey Mouse, a character he'd own outright. The company that bears Disney's name fought tooth and nail to retain ownership of Mickey Mouse when the cartoon character's copyright was about to expire."

4 of 152 comments (clear)

  1. Oh man... by qw0ntum · · Score: 5, Funny
    I wonder what it feels like to know that you are worth a cartoon character?

    From the mysterious future: Al Michaels commits suicide; friends cite work-related depression.

    --
    'Every story, if continued long enough, ends in death.' --Ernest Hemingway
  2. Almost a copy by broothal · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Notice the striking resemblance between Early Mickey Mouse and Oswald the lucky Rabbit

    1. Re:Almost a copy by fufubag · · Score: 5, Informative

      That is because Walt lost the rights to Oswald and had to come up with a new character. So Mickey is kind of like Oswald 2.0

  3. Who stole who's IP? by EccentricAnomaly · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Something they can all be proud of

    I don't know about that... I was reading the site linked in the article and found this blurb... and other googling revealed many accounts that Ub Iwerks was the real creator of Oswald and Mickey... not Walt. (http://www.vitaphone.org/flip.html)

    MGM's first sound cartoon character was Flip The Frog. Flip The Frog was created by Ub Iwerks. Ub Iwerks was the CREATOR of Mickey Mouse and had drawned the early Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphony cartoons. (Walt Disney didn't know how to draw and never learned. Take a look at some of the Laugh O Grams that he drew and you'll see how poor his drawing skills were. You can look at the Mickey Mouse poster on the bottom of this page and see what it says: A Walt Disney Comic...Drawn by Ub Iwerks. ) Disney propaganda would have you believe otherwise but the case can be settled by looking at the newspapers, advertisements and magazines of the era. Below you can see a clipping from a 1930 German newspaper hailing the new creation of Ub Iwerks, the creator of Mickey Mouse. Ub Iwerks had actually drawn a frog and his girlfriend in the Silly Symphony cartoons. In one of the last SIlly Symphonies that Ub Iwerks drew the foucs of the film were these two frogs. This cartoon is called Summer. Ub Iwerks with the help of Pat Powers started this new cartoon series after leaving Disney. The first cartoon that Ub Iwerks made for the series was also the first COLOR sound cartoon that was ever made. (Even though Disney would have you believe other wise. Incidentally the first sound cartoon was not the Mickey Mouse cartoon called "Steamboat Willie" but an Aesop's Fable which Disney had seen and copied in 1928 called "DINNER TIME". The first Flip The Frog cartoon had a mouse playing a violin and you can see above. When reading books on so-called animation history some SOB Disney propagandists even refer to the mouse in FIDDLESTICKS as a copy of Walt's Disney Mickey Mouse! Will Disney ever stop taking credit from other people who deserve it?

    --
    There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.