When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain and you think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it,” wrote AA Milne in the House at Pooh Corner in 1928.He can little have imagined that, 75 years later, a court in Los Angeles would be deciding a case about that Bear of Very Little Brain — worth billions of dollars — which would hold significance for the issue of copyright.On May 5 United States District Court Judge Florence-Marie Cooper heard the latest arguments in one of the most drawn-out cases in show-business legal history. On the result of the case hangs billions of dollars in revenue for the Walt Disney Company in what has become the case of the Mouse — Disney’s nickname in the business — and the Bear.Last week Judge Cooper gave a tentative ruling that Clare Milne, the author’s granddaughter, cannot reclaim merchandising rights for Winnie the Pooh. If this ruling is finalised it would mean victory for the Slesingers, the American family who acquired the rights in 1929 and who claim that Disney owes them millions of dollars in royalties. It would mean they retain their share of royalties on Pooh merchandise until 2024. The ruling would come as a major blow to Disney, which receives at least $1-billion of its annual $25-billion revenue from Milne’s creation, although the Slesingers are claiming as much as $4,5-billion.Disney will be presenting its case in a bid to persuade the judge not to finalise her ruling. It had been seeking to terminate the Slesingers’s rights under the 1998 Copyright Act that allows the heirs of a writer or artist to reclaim merchandising rights in certain circumstances.David Nimmer, a Disney attorney, told the Los Angeles Times that it was not conceding defeat. ”We believe in the strength of our position and we look forward to presenting our case,” said Nimmer. Attorneys for Shirley Slesinger Lasswell, widow of the man who acquired the rights, and his daughter, Patricia Slesinger, said the ruling would be a ”major victory”.The legal battle of the rights has been under way for more than a decade and has already run up millions of dollars in legal fees on both sides. New York literary agent Stephen Slesinger bought the rights from AA Milne in 1929 and for years the Slesinger family has received royalties from the merchandising, having reached a licensing agreement with Disney in 1961. Then, 12 years ago, the Slesingers claimed that Disney owed them millions of dollars in unpaid royalties.Disney rejected the claim, insisting that the products in question were not covered by its original agreement. One of Disney’s legal team, Daniel Petrocelli, told Fortune magazine earlier this year that ”it’s a perfect example of a simple and straightforward case getting bollixed up by lawyers who are trying to invent and conjure up claims where no claim really exists”.The dispute has taken on a bitterness that neither Mickey nor Pooh would feel comfortable with. Both sides have claimed that the other side has shredded documents vital to the case.Disney has appeared to be on the edge of victory itself in the past. In 1997, a court-appointed accounting firm found that the company owed the Slesingers only $60 508 in unpaid royalties. But the case was not settled and from 1991 to 2000 the Slesinger share of royalties soared from $334 731 to $12,4-million.Last year Disney claimed another breakthrough. It said a new deal had been struck that would give it exclusive rights to all the Pooh characters from 2004. This was based on the decision by the respective granddaughters of both Milne and Pooh illustrator EH Shepard to take advantage of 1998 changes in US copyright law that allow them to reclaim their rights and enter into new agreements.The claim was immediately disputed by the Slesinger side. ”I don’t know exactly what they are talking about,” said Bonnie Eskanazi, a Slesinger lawyer at the time. ”The Slesingers bought the rights outright from the Milnes and they can’t just divest the Slesingers of those rights.”But even if Judge Cooper does finalise her ruling and hand a victory to the Slesingers, the case will be far from over. Disney has indicated that, if the ruling goes against it, it will appeal.Perhaps in the end the simplest method of deciding would be one that a Bear of Very Little Brain could understand: the best of three in a game of Pooh sticks, in which sticks are dropped on one side of a bridge and the winner is the one whose sticks emerge first on the other side of the bridge. But somehow it seems that this is not something that the US District Court in Los Angeles will agree to. — Â