The row over Winnie the Pooh has been running 13 years

Steven Slesinger Inc (SSI) admitted taking papers in a Los Angeles court, but said they were ones Disney "didn't care about and did abandon".

SSI, which owns merchandising rights to the Pooh characters, claims Disney owes it royalties from its films.

But Disney says these are not covered by its licensing agreement with SSI.

Walt Disney has been involved in the court case for 13 years.

The company says it will lose hundreds of millions of dollars if it loses the case. A judge will decide after the current hearing whether a trial will be held.

Public property

Disney officials claimed the confidential documents were stolen on behalf of SSI by a private investigator in the early 1990s.

Tommy Lee Sands told to the court on Wednesday that he had been hired by SSI to go through rubbish bags of paperwork from the Disney building in Burbank.

Mr Sands said he had only taken documents relating to Winnie the Pooh.

He said he had contacted the police beforehand and was told he could search bins as long as they were neither on private property nor locked.

The bin in question was located in a public alley and was not locked during searches, Mr Sands said.

But he also said he had not contacted the company about the searches "because there would be a good possibility that the next time I went there, there would be a lock on the gate".

SSI said Disney had known for years it had hired private investigators to look for documents in dustbins but had not objected.

But SSI denied entering Disney buildings to obtain documents from desks or briefcases.

This latest instalment in the copyright row comes amid a debate about Disney's future.