A Parisian judge, on March 12, 2004, threw out a claim made by French children's author Franck Le Calvez that would stop the sale of FINDING NEMO merchandise in France, reported the DOW JONES BUSINESS JOURNAL. Le Calvez claims that NEMO is a copyright infringement of his 2002 book PIERROT LE POISSON CLOWN, which features a lead clown fish character who looks strikingly like Nemo.

Broadcasters may have to rethink how adult their adult animation gets now that the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed legislation increasing the maximum fine for radio and TV indecency from $11,000 to $500,000, reports the ASSOCIATED PRESS.

The vote was 391-22. A U.S. Senate bill is under discussion. The bill raises the maximum fine for a broadcast license-holder from $27,500 to $500,000 and the fine for a performer from $11,000 to $500,000.

London-based Cloud 9 Screen Entertainment Group has established a new company called Dreamcloud on the Gold Coast, in Queensland, Australia as a joint venture with Light Knights Entertainment, the Brisbane-based animation company whose credits include the 3D musical animated drama series, THE SHAPIES.

The merger of the distribution arms of Antefilms Production and France Animation has resulted in the launch of Moonscoop at MIP-TV, a new joint distribution brand. It will combine the respective sales slates of the two companies to create a catalog of more than 1,600 half hours of programming including popular titles such as FUNKY COPS and TITEUF.

Disney veteran animators Tom Bancroft and Rob Corley have formed a new animation development company, Funnypages Prods. Llc, which joins their already existing subsidiary comic book publishing company, Funnypages Press in Orlando, Florida. Funnypages Prods. will offer a full range of animation production as well as illustration, character design and artistic development. The animation house has also developed many original properties for film and television.

Marvel Enterprises Inc. has released its financial results for its fourth quarter and year ended December 31, 2003, in addition to a three-for-two stock split in the form of a stock dividend of one additional share of the company's common stock for every two shares held. The additional shares will be distributed on March 26, 2004 to stockholders of record on March 12, 2004.

A whopping 43% of Walt Disney Co. shareholders voted against retaining Michael Eisner as chairman and ceo today (March 3, 2004) in Philadelphia, delivering a stunning blow that lead to the Disney board of directors stripping Eisner of his chairman title within hours after the vote, the strongest rebuke in U.S. corporate history. The Disney board then elected former U. S. Senator George Mitchell to the newly created position of chairman of the board.

A day before the Walt Disney Co.'s annual shareholder meeting in Philadelphia, ex-directors Roy Disney and Stanley Gold proclaimed at a news conference they will work as long as it takes to oust Disney chairman and ceo Michael Eisner. They believe that a dissenting vote of 15-20% will be sufficient. Gold said whatever the outcome they are not going away. They hope to rally as many as 1,000 shareholders during their 15-minute presentation at Wednesday's (March 3, 2004)10:00 am meeting (EST), which will be Webcast live at www.disney.com/investors.

After three successful years rhinofx, the New York visual effects studio, has launched a new division offering 3D previsualization. Having ventured into visual effects projects for film, television and video games, rhinofx is doubling its workspace in their New York midtown office building. A larger workforce and more artist stations are in place and previs services are being ramped up to form the new division called rhinofx previz.

The founders, the stockholders and now the Canadian authorities have approved the sale of CINAR Corp. to the investor group comprised of Michael Hirsh, Toper Taylor and TD Capital Canadian Private Equity Partners through 4113683 Canada Inc. ("Newco").

The Quebec Superior Court granted approval by Justice Joel A. Silcoff, on Feb. 25, 2004, following a hearing in Montreal, on February 19 and 20.