The Japanese company behind Hello Kitty has agreed with the Dutch creator of bunny character Miffy to end a copyright row and instead donate legal costs to victims of the March earthquake and tsunami.
An Amsterdam court in November 2010 ordered Sanrio to halt production and sales of Cathy – Kitty’s rabbit friend – merchandise in The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg after finding the Japanese bunny closely resembled Miffy, created by a Dutch children’s author in the 1950s. Sanrio argued no such infringement had taken place and appealed the injunction which had been sought by Mercis, the Dutch copyright management firm acting for Miffy’s creator Dick Bruna.
But after a lengthy dispute the two companies issued a joint press release late Tuesday announcing that they had reached “a worldwide settlement ending all legal disputes” and spelling the end for Cathy. (AFP)
Internet film raids
Police carried out coordinated raids in Germany, France and Spain in connection with a probe into an internet film provider suspected of breaching copyright rules, German authorities said yesterday.
Police investigating the German-language Kino.to company, used by four million customers daily, raided some 20 premises in Germany, the prosecutor’s office in Dresden, southeastern Germany, said. Thirteen people have been detained and one is still being sought, the statement said. It did not specify where the arrests had taken place.
The firm, which streams films over the internet, is suspected of being involved with a criminal organisation and of breaching copyright laws over one million times, the prosecutor’s office said. (AFP)
Ophelia death link
A “tantalising” family link to Shakespeare’s tragic character Ophelia has been revealed by an academic study of accidental deaths in Tudor England.
A coroner’s report shows Jane Shaxspere drowned aged two-and-a-half while picking corn marigolds 20 miles from Stratford-upon-Avon in 1569, when the playwright would have been aged about five.
The discovery led to speculation that Jane could have been his younger cousin, and that her story inspired the death of the flower-loving Ophelia character in Hamlet, who drowned after falling into a brook. (PA)
New invention
A team of Japanese inventors have come with a new device that blends the country’s fascination with cuteness and its penchant for experimental high-tech - brainwave-controlled cat ears.
The fluffy headwear reads users’ brain activity, meaning the ears perk up when they concentrate and then flop down again to lay flat against the head when users enter a relaxed state of mind, say its developers.
The gizmo is called “Necomimi” – a play on the Japanese words for cat and ear, but the first two syllables are also short for “neuro communication”, Neurowear, the inventor team whose brainchild it is, said. (AFP)
‘Lenin’ arrested
Police have detained a double of Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin for swearing on Red Square, although he and his partner “Tsar Nicholas II” view this as extortion, reports said yesterday.
Sergei Solovyev, 53, has worked as Lenin for nearly a decade, charging tourists 100 rubles (nearly $4) for pictures of himself dressed in a simple black suit and red tie.
He business partner Viktor Cherkasov, 55, impersonates Russia’s last tsar – the man Lenin had killed in 1918. Police detained Lenin when he and Nicholas II were having a simple conversation not far from the real Lenin’s mausoleum, said Mr Cherkasov, who added they were wrongfully accused by a man who sells incense sticks nearby.
The man who poses as Lenin is now scheduled to attend a court hearing. (AFP)
Wild elephants’ rampage
Two wild elephants went on a rampage in a southern Indian city, killing at least one person.
New Delhi Television news channel showed the body of a man at the feet of one of the animals in Mysore, yesterday. The footage also showed an elephant kicking a cow.
Experts were trying to tranquillise the animals and asked residents to stay indoors and not throw stones at them. (PA)