Mickey Mouse Will You Please Come to the Stand….

Posted on December 4, 2007 in Strange

The Italian judge who ordered the world’s most trademarked mouse to court doesn’t quite get a Nipper Kettle Award because, quite honestly, he wasn’t grasping for fame and the whole thing may be a clerical error anyways:

The court summons cites Titti, Paperino, Paperina, Topolino — the Italian names for the characters — as damaged parties in the criminal trial of a Chinese man accused of counterfeiting products of Disney and Warner Bros.

Instead of naming only the companies and their legal representatives, clerks also wrote in the witness list the names of the cartoons that decorated the toys and gadgets the man had reproduced, said Fiorenza Sorotto, vice president of Disney Company Italia.

“Unfortunately they cannot show up, as they are residents of Disneyland,” Sorotto joked in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “It certainly pleased us that the characters were considered real, because that’s what we try to do.”

Disney continues to enjoy unbridled profits from Mickey who has managed to evade death by lapse of copyright for many years now.

[tags]strange, odd news, odd, Mickey Mouse, Tweety, Disney, cartoons[/tags]