Copyright issues/ Doesn't Disney own Peter Pan?

So I've gotten this question from the get-go:
What about the copyright?
Doesn't Disney own Peter Pan?
How are you supposed to deal with the rights?

Okay so first of all, all of my research on copyright ownership is from wikipedia, so while I didn't use official, bibliography-worthy sources, I have a feeling that wikipedia is still a viable go-to place to get my infos. Here they are by the way: http://neverpedia.com/pan/Ownership_of_the_Peter_Pan_works   and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_and_Wendy#Copyright_status

So here we go.

A little background: The GREAT J.M. Barrie wrote Peter Pan (or The Boy that Wouldn't Grow Up) as a play in 1904, then as a book in 1911, with some parts edited to fit on to the page. After his death, he bequeathed the rights of Peter Pan -play and novel- to Great Ormond Street Hospital, or GOSH, a children's hospital in London.

Now, copyrights generally last until 50 years after the owner's death, but it can be renewed to extend past that deadline, like what GOSH (yeah, we're calling them that now) did. Barrie died in 1937, which means that the copyright should have expired in 1987, but -and I quote- it "was revived in 1995 through 31 December 2007 by a directive to harmonize copyright laws within the EU..."


You can skip this if you want, because it's boring until...

"...Meanwhile in 1988, former Prime Minister James Callaghan sponsored a Parliamentary Bill granting a perpetual extension of some of the rights to the work, entitling the hospital to royalties for any performance, publication, or adaptation of the play. This is not a true perpetual copyright (copyright without a finite term/extension of a copyright that up until now had a limit), however, as it does not grant the hospital creative control over the use of the material, nor the right to refuse permission to use it."

And in the U.S. the copyright laws are different. I quote from the same article:
"The laws are different in the US Under the Berne Convention, the copyright to Peter Pan transferred to GOSH just like in the UK, but the clock started ticking on its expiration long before Barrie died.

When The Little White Bird was written, US copyrights lasted at most 42 years after publication, but this was extended to 56 years in 1909, so the copyright to LWB expired at the end of 1958.
"But that's not the version of Peter Pan that most people know and love, so that made little difference in terms of exploiting the character.
 "The play and the original play Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up were was written and performed in 1904, but it wasn't published, so the clock didn't start ticking.
 In 1911, Peter and Wendy was published, in New York as well as London, and that is the story and characters that most people identify as "Peter Pan". The copyright to that book expired at the end of 1967."
While they may have extended the copyright to 2028, that's only for the stage play before it goes into the public domain. "GOSH now acknowledges that the copyright for the novel version of the story has expired in the United States, and with it the copyright for the characters themselves. GOSH does still assert a copyright to the published version of the script, though they've expressed a lack of interest in pursuing someone who might include (copyrighted) bits from the play in an adaptation of the (public domain) novel."


...here.

So basically the book is in public domain in the U.S. and U.K. Except for Spain and the Netherlands, where the work goes into public domain later on after the author dies (around 70-75 years-ish), the book is safe to be adapted.

And, no, Disney does NOT own any part of Peter Pan. Maybe their own version/adaptations, like the Tinker Bell movie series or Jake and the Neverland Pirates or maybe the other ways they use the characters, but if I wanted to use the original source material, they wouldn't be able to stop it.

I can write whatever I want with the original novel and other source material. I'll talk about what makes my version different than the others made/ filmed/ published in another entry, but hopefully that answers those questions.


Sorry for boring you all with this "lecture" but it had to be done. It's all over now; we can move into more fun topics.
See you all in the sunlight!!


-Zach

 P.S.- This sort of research can be applied to any work you might have as well. Just make sure to do the research first. Otherwise, Fanfiction.net could use your story.