A US federal judge in California granted Stephen Slesinger Inc., which claims the rights to Winnie the Pooh, a "summary judgment" that effectively ends Disney's efforts to take back the copyright, said attorney Barry Slotnick. "The court once again has once ruled that Disney's claims against Slesinger are improper," Slotnick said in a statement.

"Now that Disney's misguided claims have been dismissed, we can focus on pursuing Slesinger's claims against Disney for damages, trademark and copyright infringement, breach of contract, and fraudulently underpaying royalties, and seeking in excess of two billion dollars in compensatory and general damages," he said. The heirs of Stephen Slesinger, who bought the US rights from "Pooh" author A.A. Milne in 1930 and began licensing them to Disney in 1961, claim the powerful firm has cheated them out of hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties.

Slesinger's widow agreed to negotiate the rights deal with Disney after his death. A first agreement was reached in 1961 and re-negotiated in 1983. Milne's granddaughter, Claire, has sought to claim back the rights to the honey-guzzling bear with Disney's support.

The ruling, disclosed on the court's Web site today, eliminates a procedural hurdle to Slesinger seeking more than $2 billion in damages from Disney. Disney had tried to terminate Slesinger's rights to characters the media company has marketed for more than four decades. Slesinger acquired the rights from Milne in 1930.

"This is definitely a setback for Disney," said Carole Handler, an intellectual property lawyer with Foley & Lardner in Los Angeles. "They tried to dismantle the license of the party that has been most troublesome to them in court."

The ruling is part of a larger 16-year legal battle between Burbank, California-based Disney and closely held Slesinger that's being fought in state and federal courts and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Last week, Los Angeles-based Slesinger asked the Patent Office to cancel rights to 25 Pooh-related names obtained by Disney since 1996. Disney "was not the owner of the registered marks at the time that these filings were made," Slesinger said in a petition. The company was "at most, only a licensee."

Ellenshaw began his association with Walt Disney in 1947, when he was tapped to work on the Studio's first live-action film, "Treasure Island" (1950), and continued working there until his retirement in 1979 following "The Black Hole."

Commenting on Ellenshaw's passing, Roy E. Disney said, "Peter was a Disney legend in every sense of the word and played a vital role in the creation of many of the Studio's greatest live-action films from the very beginning. He was a brilliant and innovative visual effects pioneer who was able to consistently please my Uncle Walt, and push the boundaries of the medium to fantastic new heights. From his incredibly beautiful and effective matte paintings for films like 'Mary Poppins,' 'Treasure Island,' and '20,000 Leagues...,' to his landmark painting of the iconic Disneyland map, he was a true master of his art. Outside of the Studio, he was a fantastic painter in his own right, and I always loved his Irish paintings and felt that he did the best seascapes in the world."

Film critic and historian Leonard Maltin added, "Long before the era of modern special effects, Peter was working his magic in Disney films. People never knew how he accomplished his visual feats. 'Darby O'Gill and the Little People' remains one of the most amazing, eye-popping achievements in all of film history. And when you think that 'Mary Poppins' was made without anyone ever setting foot outside a soundstage -- let alone visiting London -- you get some idea of what he was able to pull off."

Craig Barron, president of Matte World Digital and co-author of the book The Invisible Art: The Legends of Movie Matte Paintings, observed, "Ellenshaw's matte work was truly the stuff that movie magic dreams were made of. He took audiences on cinematic journeys to the most incredible places like Captain Nemo's volcanic island from '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,' or the fairy mountain cave of 'Darby O'Gill and the Little People,' or a tour of London's magical rooftops for 'Mary Poppins.' His matte painting work belongs to that unsung craft that's now virtually disappeared. With only a small crew, he created, almost single-handedly, incredible movie making locations with just the sublime artistry of brush strokes -- literally the 'art' in movies that generations of audiences have appreciated unawares, thanks to the skill of this great-departed movie artist."

Born in Great Britain in 1913, Ellenshaw began his film career in the early 1930s, when he apprenticed for visual effects pioneer W. Percy (Pop) Day, O.B.E. He worked on such productions as "Things to Come," "Rembrandt," "Elephant Boy," "Sixty Glorious Years," "A Matter of Life and Death," and the Michael Powell-Emeric Pressburger classic "Black Narcissus."

After a stint as a pilot in the RAF during World War II, Ellenshaw created matte paintings for MGM's "Quo Vadis." In 1947, his work caught the attention of an art director for the Walt Disney Studios. Disney was in the pre- planning stages of his very first live-action film, "Treasure Island," which would be produced in Great Britain, and the art director inquired if Ellenshaw would be interested in the project. Thus began a professional collaboration and friendship with Walt Disney that would span over 30 years and 34 films.

Ellenshaw regarded Walt Disney as a source of inspiration, a wonderful executive, and over the years, a good friend. "Walt had the ability to communicate with artists," observed Ellenshaw. "He'd talk to you on your level -- artist to artist. He used to say, 'I can't draw, Peter.' But he had the soul of an artist, and he had a wonderful way of transferring his enthusiasm to you."

Among his many projects at Disney, Ellenshaw made major artistic contributions to the television shows "Davy Crockett" and "Zorro," and such classic feature films as "The Sword in the Rose," "The Story of Robin Hood and his Merrie Men," "Darby O'Gill and the Little People," "Third Man on the Mountain," "Swiss Family Robinson," "The Love Bug," "Bedknobs and Broomsticks," and "The Black Hole." He officially retired from the Studio in 1979 but returned years later to paint several matte paintings for the 1990 film, "Dick Tracy." He was designated a "Disney Legend" in 1993.

In addition to his career in the motion picture industry, Ellenshaw became known as one of the finest marine artists of the past century known not only for his dramatic seascapes but his elegant Irish landscapes and vivid oils of the Himalayas and Monet's garden at Giverny.

Ellenshaw's beloved wife of 58 years, Bobbie, passed away in 2000. He is survived by his two children, Lynda Ellenshaw Thompson (an industry veteran visual effects producer), and Harrison Ellenshaw (a visual effects artist who was an Oscar nominee for "The Black Hole," matte supervisor on "Star Wars: Episodes IV and V" and visual effects supervisor for "Tron"), as well as his two grandchildren, Michael and Hilary. Funeral services will be private. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Direct Relief International, Santa Barbara, California.

Mr. Keane, a 31-year veteran who created the beast from "Beauty and the Beast" and Ariel from "The Little Mermaid," was a Disney traditionalist. But after a series of experiments to see if he could create a computer-animated ballerina, his opposition softened. So he invited the 50 animators to discuss the pros and cons of both art forms, calling his seminar "The Best of Both Worlds."

For an hour, Mr. Keane painstakingly ticked through the pluses and minuses of each technique while the other animators listened quietly. After a few tentative questions, the crowd burst into chatter, as animators shouted over one another, some arguing that computers should not replace people while others expressed fears that they would be forced to draw by hand.

In a recent interview, Mr. Keane recalled that Kevin Geiger, a computer animation supervisor, then stood up and demanded of him, "If you can do all this cool stuff that you're talking about - that you want to see in animation - but you have to give up the pencil to do it, are you in?" Mr. Keane hesitated before answering: "I'm in."

Three weeks later, the company's animators were told that Disney would concentrate on making computer-animated movies, abandoning a 70-year-old hand-drawn tradition in favor of a style popularized by more successful, newer rivals like Pixar Animation Studios and DreamWorks Animation. The results were nothing short of a cultural revolution at the studio, which is famous for the hand-drawn classics championed by its founder Walt Disney - from "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" to "Peter Pan."