Jip en Janneke are characters from famous Dutch childrens books by Annie M.G. Schmidt (1911-1995). Since these books are so popular in the Netherlands, many organisations that deal with children such as playgroups or créches name themselves after Annie's characters, e.g. "Kinderopvang Jip en Janneke".

Wombat BV, the company which represents Annie's heirs, is for over three years now busy writing to thes institutions asking them to pay a licence fee of €350, as the AD reports. Their reasons are twofold: "We want to prevent that organisations that we would not support could use Annies good name and do damage to her work" said Renske Pesman, spokesman for Wombat BV. He also claims that these organisations were using "names that are protected by authors' rights. They [the organisations] have to pay for that."

In a funny way Pensman's rethoric mirrors authors' rights: there is the moral right that protects the integrity of an author's creation, and there are the commercial rights that ascertain the commercial exploitation of an author's creation to the author or their licencee.

But are the activities of Wombat BV really about authors' rights? I doubt it. Wobmat BV is treating "Jip en Janneke" as if it were a Trade Mark. The moral rights of an author protects the integrity of the work … I guess it would be hard to argue that it also protects the names of characters from a story to be used in a proper context. The commercial rights reserve commercial exploitation of the work, i.e. publication, and several secondary uses like translation, making a film etc. However, this holds for entire works or parts of them but most not for the name of characters.

By abusing authors' rights to cash in Hollywod-style in cases where the actual rights are not infringed, Wombat BV is maybe creating some short-term income of a few thousand Euros, but in the long-run they are damaging authors' rights by creating (or should I say: reiterating) the image of greedy rights-owners whose interest is not creativity and cultural diversity but to make a quick buck on the expense of innocent and ill-informed fellow citizens.

Eventually the activities of Wombat BV could even backfire … "Jip en Janneke" is in actual fact a registered trade mark for Novagraaf Nederland BV, since 1996.