【Research Center for the Legal System of Intellectual Property】

Activities

Peter Pan Act

Research Associate Tetsuya Imamura

Every copyright holder has dreamed of an eternal copyright. However, allowing such a copyright would stifle the progress of science and culture. Copyrights expire with the passage of time, then, they become available to posterity to seek further development. Nevertheless, the almighty British Parliament, which goes by the saying that “in Parliament, anything is possible, but to make a man a woman or a woman a man”, has had one legislative case in the past, which permitted a copyright to be prolonged indefinitely.

Sir James Matthew Barrie, who was born in Scotland, is the author of the play ‘Peter Pan’, or ‘The boy who would not grow up’. In April 1929, he assigned the copyright of 'Peter Pan' to the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children. Barrie died in 1937. Under the law applicable then in the United Kingdom, the term of copyright protection was during the life of the author, and extending fifty years after death. Thus, the term of copyright of the play ‘Peter Pan’ expired on December 31st, 1987 (but was reestablished by the European Union directive).

In 1988, the British Parliament decided to change the copyright law. The section 301 of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 now states that “[t]he provisions of Schedule 6 have effect for conferring on trustees for the benefit of the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, London, a right to royalties with respect to the public performance, commercial publication, broadcasting or inclusion in a cable program service of the play 'Peter Pan' by Sir James Matthew Barrie, or of any adaptation of that work, notwithstanding that the copyright in the work expired on 31 December 1987”. Thus his goodwill would be protected perpetually unless the Hospital is closed or the Parliament repeals the article.

The amendment is in good practice with the British Parliament. It is also unique in the respect that the act uses, in particular, the name “Peter Pan.” On the other hand, in terms of Japan, it is theoretically difficult for the Japanese Diet to legislate such an act because the Diet is not authorized to establish an act for individual-specific cases according to the construction of Article 41 of Japanese Constitution.