This is Knut, Berlin Zoo's celebrity polar bear, wishing it would all just go away.
Having seesawed from rejection by his mother to World's Cutest Creature - an official title, awarded by the UN High Commission on Ick - to public outing as a narcissistic psychopath with severe sexual dysfunction, Knut now has to face the trauma of a legal dispute: like Bleak House, but furry.
His father, Lars, was loaned to Berlin by Neumunster Zoo on the basis that Neumunster would keep the first-born (you get the impression that German legal arrangements are based on precedents in the Brothers Grimm: "Yes, we will buy Opel from General Motors, but in return you must give us the first living thing you meet when you arrive home"). Now Berlin wants to buy Knut outright; Neumunster is ready to sell (so this is not, as some reports suggest, a "custody battle") but wants a share of Berlin's Knut-derived income, which has been considerable: as some indication, when it was announced in March 2007 that Knut was being registered as a trademark, the zoo's share-price doubled; last summer, the zoo claimed its five millionth Knut visitor.
Last week a judge recommended that Berlin pay €700,000, but they refused to go higher than €350,000. Bernhard Blaskiewitz, Berlin Zoo's director, is reported to have said at an earlier stage "Give them a few penguins and let that be an end to it"; I don't know the current penguin-euro rate, but suspect that their latest offer is an improvement. The parties have now been told to negotiate a compromise - by 13 June according to some reports, within two months according to others. Meanwhile, Knut is getting larger and less cute by the day.
For background reading, can I recommend this thorough and entertaining piece, on trademarking polar bears, from the Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice; and this excellent dissection of the original "Knut must die!" controversy at the website of the Australian TV show Media Watch.
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