Although losing Mickey Mouse would be the greatest rights setback for the world's biggest family entertainment company, it wouldn't be the first.

One of Walt Disney's earliest creations was Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. After the cartoon proved popular, a New York distributor used an advantage in its contract to take control of Oswald, then hired many of Disney's artists. Mickey was the product of a desperate comeback attempt by Walt and his brother.

After that painful experience, the Disneys "held on to everything they did with a ferociously strong grip," former company Vice Chairman Roy E. Disney said recently. Disney's carefully controlled licensing pioneered a sweeping business strategy that today uses television to promote movies that sell toys and bring people out to theme parks.

Though Disney sees itself as the hero of a corporate Cinderella story, the company's aggression in copyright cases has verged on the cartoonish.

There was the time that it threatened to sue three Florida day-care centers for painting Disney figures on their walls. And this year, Disney did sue a home-based business for $1 million after a couple put on children's parties with ersatz Eeyore and Tigger costumes.

Ironically, the company has mounted international efforts to claim some characters for the public domain — such as Bambi and Peter Pan — even as it defends Mickey Mouse. Many of Disney's most famous figures were the creations of others, including Cinderella, Pinocchio, Pooh and Snow White, although it has vigorously protected its depictions of them.

In such battles, Disney has been known to employ arguments every bit as arcane as anything raised against it by Gregory S. Brown.

Take the saga of Bambi, by Austrian Felix Salten. The story of the fawn was published in Germany in 1923 without a formal copyright notice, which wasn't required there. Three years later, Salten republished it with a notice.

In the 1930s, Salten's rights were assigned to Disney, which made the famous 1942 movie. When Salten's heirs renewed the copyright in 1954, they correctly listed 1926 as the year of Bambi's first copyright.

But in a 1994 dispute over royalties with a small publisher that had acquired the Salten family's rights, Disney lawyers said the 1954 copyright was void because it was filed three years too late — based on the fact that the story was first published in 1923. A federal judge sided with Disney, ruling that Bambi was in the public domain.

Although that finding was reversed on appeal, the legal ordeal bankrupted the publisher.