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Rights and wrong.


The Stamp Collecting Report, I'm Lloyd de Vries.
 
The Supreme Court this past week let stand a California decision 
against an artist who had made thousands of dollars with his 
drawings of The Three Stooges. The state court had ruled that 
even artwork of the comedians needs permission from their estates 
for commercial sale.


It's not a surprise to stamp collectors. One branch of the hobby, 
first day covers, deals with envelopes decorated to be used with 
new stamp issues. Postal services worldwide are turning more and 
more to pop culture to sell stamps -- Let's face it, more people 
will buy stamps with Moe, Larry and Curly than with Adams, 
Franklin and Jefferson.


That means it's hard to make those special envelopes for commercial 
sale without threading the maze of copyrights and licenses. Even 
Mark Twain has an agent now!


It affects postal services, too, and it's not just people. In order 
to put the Olympic Rings on the Winter Games stamps issued this past 
week, the U-S Postal Service had to cut a deal with the Olympic 
Committee.


And that's stamp collecting this week. 


I'm Lloyd de Vries, CBS News.

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