No Joke: Mickey Mouse, Tweety Bird & others ordered to appear in
court!!!!!
Date: Sun, 9 Dec 2007 21:47:28 -0500
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/12/04/cartoon.witnesses.ap/index.html
Court orders cartoon characters to witness stand
ROME, Italy (AP) -- Tweety may get a chance to take the witness stand
and sing like a canary.
An Italian court ordered the animated bird, along with Mickey Mouse,
Donald Duck and his girlfriend Daisy, to testify in a counterfeiting
case.
In what lawyers believe was a clerical error worthy of a Looney Tunes
cartoon, a court in Naples sent a summons to the characters ordering
them to appear Friday in a trial in the southern Italian city, officials
said.
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."
The Naples court will have to rewrite the summons, although this will
probably delay the trial, said Disney lawyer Cristina Ravelli.
"Let's hope the characters will not be prosecuted for failing to
appear," Ravelli quipped.
Calls seeking comment from Warner Bros. in Milan were not immediately
returned. Phones at the Naples court were not answered Tuesday.
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