Peter Pan is not only renowned for never growing up but also for never having to lose copyright protection in the UK thanks to a special exception campaigned for in the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 by former Prime Minister, James Callaghan whose wife, Audrey, was a chairwoman of the Hospital. This exception says that the trustees of the Great Ormond Street Hospital are entitled to a royalty or other agreed form of remuneration in respect of any public performance, commercial publication, broadcasting or inclusion in a cable programme service of the whole or any substantial part of the play ‘Peter Pan’ by Sir James Matthew Barrie or an adaptation of it. [1]

The play is already in the public domain in some countries such as Canada which has a copyright term which extends for fifty years after an author’s death. (In this case, the author, J M Barrie, died in 1937 although he assigned the copyright to the hospital in 1929.) There are, nonetheless, copyright issues which exist in relation to the publication of works produced in such countries in jurisdictions in which Peter Pan is still protected by copyright as have been seen in the case of Emily Somma v Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children. [2]

With the exeption of the UK, Peter Pan will, however, soon lose copyright protection in the rest of the world. Time finally seems to have run out for the boy who refused to grow up. Perhaps, now, we will see more books like Somma’s (which spoke of him as an adult) enter the market.