While Disney is running around stretching copyright so that Micky Mouse will never enter the public domain, Disney is perfectly willing to engage in legal trickery to destroy someone else's copyright.

Take the saga of Bambi, by Austrian Felix Salten. The story of the fawn was first published in Germany in 1923 without a formal copyright notice, which wasn't required there. Three years later, Salten republished it with a notice.

In the 1930s, Salten's rights were assigned to Disney, which made the famous 1942 movie. When Salten's heirs renewed the copyright in 1954, they correctly listed 1926 as the year of Bambi's first copyright.

But in a 1994 dispute over royalties with a small publisher that had acquired the Salten family's rights, Disney lawyers said the 1954 copyright was void because it was filed three years too late -- based on the fact that the story was first published in 1923. A federal judge sided with Disney, ruling Bambi was in the public domain.

Though that finding was reversed on appeal, the legal ordeal bankrupted the publisher.

Scum. I hope they lose the copyright to Mickey because of a similar minor detail. They've clearly established that they feel the law should be applied that way.