HIGH COURT STAYS OUT OF DISNEY DISPUTE.

Byline: Bob Drummond Bloomberg Business News

Walt Disney Co. won a court fight Monday over the videotape rights to familiar songs from two classic full-length cartoons, ``Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs'' and ``Pinocchio.''

The Supreme Court refused to consider an appeal by a music publishing company owner who holds the copyright on the songs and who argued that a 1930s licensing agreement did not give Disney the right to use the music on the relatively new videotape technology without paying royalties. The agreement did give Disney the right to use the songs in motion pictures.

In refusing to hear the dispute, the high court stayed out of an escalating nationwide dispute about the collision between old copyrights and new technologies that weren't invented until years, or even decades, after licensing agreements were negotiated.

Courts increasingly are being asked to decide who owns the rights to distribute older books, articles, music, art, or films on emerging technologies, such as on-line networks and compact disks. As those outlets become more popular, writers, composers, musicians and other artists, who signed earlier contracts to publish or distribute their work by more traditional means, say they should be paid anew for the new-technology rights.

``The interpretation of old contracts in light of new and future technologies represents potential revenues of hundreds of millions of dollars to copyright owners, authors and licensees,'' said a brief for Beebe Bourne, owner of the company that holds music rights to the two Disney films and urged the Supreme Court to step into the fray. ``This case is of the utmost interest to the multibillion-dollar entertainment, publishing, and computer industries.''

The high court fight centered on 1937 and 1939 contracts between Disney and Irving Berlin Inc., which gave the music publisher rights to songs from the classic films - including Snow White's ``Whistle While You Work,'' and ``Someday My Prince Will Come,'' and Pinocchio's Oscar-winning ``When You Wish Upon a Star.'' Bourne Co. is the successor to Berlin's music company.

Disney retained the right to use the songs in the studio's motion pictures, while Berlin was given the copyright for other uses, such as piano rolls, sheet music, records, and radio. In the case of Pinocchio, the contract gave Berlin rights involving unspecified ``other devices for the mechanical reproduction'' of the songs.

In return for the copyrights, Berlin agreed to pay Disney half of all royalties it received, and Disney in turn agreed to split its share of those payments with the in-house composers who wrote the music.