Pluto (left) and owner Mickey (right) mourned the IFC ruling.

The discontinuities in the Disney animation collection, however, is only part of what has Disney and it's corporate affiliates bothered by the decision.  "What's next?" wonders Jane Goodall, a Disney intellectual property lawyer.  "If an outside body can invalidate an entire collection of work, rendering it meaningless by fiat, what other threats can they pose to the profits of any company involved in marketing cartoon pets and their amusing antics?"

The IFC announcement comes hard on the heels of the International Astronomical Union's reclassification of the planet Pluto into "dwarf planet Pluto" earlier in the day, prompting some in the animation industry to draw conclusions. "I'm not sure what the connection is," confessed Ivan McCormick, a producer at Pixar studios, "but they both affect things called 'Pluto,' don't they?  There must be some linkage, otherwise it's an awfully funny coincidence, isn't it?"