A Sad Story
You may remember 2019, before the Covid pandemic turned us all into grocery-scrubbing lunatics for a while. That was to come in 2020, but in 2019 we were still blissfully ignorant about Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and the comparative benefits of N95, KF94, and KN95 face masks. And it was a time when we could still happily focus our attention on IP issues. One of the more interesting copyright-related issues of that innocent time was a sad case out of Britain. A four year old child, Ollie Jones, tragically died of Leukodystrophy, a rare genetic condition, a few days before Christmas. During his brief life, Ollie developed a deep love for Spider-Man, and his father wanted to include an etching of the web-slinger on his son’s tombstone. (We can pause here to feel whatever feelings we’re feeling.)
The local governing council in Maidstone, Kent was aware of US copyright law, however, and asked that the father obtain permission from Marvel to use the superhero’s image. After some false-starts (Marvel actually doesn’t own the Spider-Man copyright anymore, since it was absorbed by Disney[1]). Eventually the request reached Disney’s lawyers, and they responded with a polite No. Disney’s letter expressed the company’s “sincere condolences” and said they were honored to have “played a small part in Ollie’s happiness,” but that allowing a tombstone to be engraved with a Disney character violated a policy established by Walt Disney himself, to “not permit the use of characters on headstones, cemetery or other memorial markers or funeral urns.” Disney wanted to retain Spider-Man’s “innocence” and “magic” and not have him associated with death.[2]
A Brief Review of IP Rights
Now, as readers of Copyright for Creatives: A Practical Guide to Copyright Law for Creative People Who Make Stuff, 2d Edition will know, the owner of intellectual property has at their disposal a whole bundle of rights, and it’s their choice whether to hoard all the rights to themselves or to allow other uses of the property. No one gets to make that decision for the copyright holder; no one gets to given them unasked-for “free publicity”; the whole purpose of copyright law is to protect creators against other people using their stuff without their permission. There is no “dead child rule” that compels an IP holder to allow any proposed use. So while Disney’s refusal to allow the use of Spider-Man on a child’s gravestone may seem heartless and cruel, it is 100% legally justified, and probably a sound business decision lest cemeteries around the world suddenly start to look like Avengers: Endgame meets Mickey and Minnie and Donald. But still, pardon my use of obscure technical legal jargon, it just feels icky.
A Jealous, Zealous Protector
But that’s all in the past. We know that Disney, in addition to being the world’s largest IP owner[3] is also generally known for its unrelenting, dogged protection of its intellectual properties. Woe be unto the restaurant that thinks it would be fun to adopt a Star Wars theme, or the daycare center that uses Mickey, Minnie, and Donald Duck cutouts to decorate its playground: cease-and-desist letters from Disney’s massive legal team will be forthcoming.[4] And Disney has lodged lawsuits against the AI firm Midjourney for violating its copyright by using Disney characters’ images to train their AI.[5] Disney doesn’t want anyone playing around with its properties, and Disney. Doesn’t. Like. AI.
Except When It Does
A few days ago (December 12, 2025), the world’s largest owner of intellectual properties announced a partnership with OpenAI, the world’s most highly-valued private start-up company and a leading AI firm (also the owner of ChatGPT).[6] Under the terms of the deal, Disney agreed to pay OpenAI one billion dollars in exchange for an ownership stake in the company. Disney also agreed to open its IP vaults and permit OpenAI to use Disney animated and some movie characters to train its content-hungry AI. There are limits to Disney’s generosity, though: to avoid potentially pricey lawsuits from SAG-AFTRA members, the animated characters are voiceless, and no live-action characters with human faces are included in the deal (that is, Darth Vader is OK but Mary Poppins is not). It seems likely that this about-face by Disney is not grounded in a suddenly-discovered love for generative AI, but rather an effort to get on board the AI train and exercise some protective control rather than risk getting run over by it. In any case, ChatGPT users will soon be able to prompt the AI to generate an image of Mickey Mouse doing unspeakable things with Winnie-the-Pooh.
To be totally transparent, I tend to agree with those who say that “AI is theft.” At its core, generative AI creates what its proponents call “original content” that is derived from protected IP used without the creators’ permission. Essentially, AI gobbles up copyrighted novels, stories, blog posts, images, Internet content, and anything else that’s not nailed down, and uses that big bucket of IP to create “new” content. But it’s not really “new” if it’s just cherry-picking elements of what other people have done and creating, basically, a verbal or visual collage of protected works. However, that’s a rant for another time—or for Chapter 12 of Copyright for Creatives: A Practical Guide to Copyright Law for Creative People Who Make Stuff, 2d Edition.
The point here is that the owner of IP gets to decide when, and how, and with whom to share their property. They are not required to be “nice” in the face of human tragedy, or to view copyright infringement as valuable free publicity, or to allow others to create derivative works based on their property. (As discussed in Copyright for Creatives, some authors and creators do in fact permit and even encourage fan fiction and fan art, within reasonable limits, but Disney has never been one of those.) While it’s easy to tut-tut over the whole Spider-Man tombstone thing, and to condemn Disney as heartless and unfeeling, the bottom line is that Disney has, literally, every right when it comes to their IP.
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[1] More specifically, a complex licensing agreement from the 1990s means that ownership of Spider-Man is shared between Disney (having acquired Marvel) and Sony Pictures. Sony partially owns the film rights, as well as live-television rights. Disney controls merchandising and character usage, and Sony co-produces films in the Marvel-produced MCU movies.
[2] https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/disney-spider-man-tombstone-dead-boy
[3] Disney owns a vast and diverse IP portfolio of characters, content, and properties that includes the work products of Marvel, Lucasfilm, Pixar, and 20th Century Fox.
[4] An interesting list of Disney IP lawsuits against small companies can be found at https://blog.ipleaders.in/popular-copyright-infringement-cases-highlighting-disney-protective-intellectual-property-rights/
[5] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg5vjqdm1ypo
[6] See, e.g., https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/disney-openai-sora-investment-deal-1236448850/