Mickey Mouse specifically, having first appeared in 1928, will be in a public domain work in 2024

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act
>Mickey Mouse specifically, having first appeared in 1928, will be in a public domain work in 2024
Does anyone know what The Mouse is currently doing regarding this? Almost 3 years is not a long time.

Attached: Mickey_Mouse.png (265x370, 59.82K)

I doubt they're doing anything. They still have him trademarked, no one can make new content about him for profit without their permission, it's just Steamboat Willie that will enter public domain. I don't know why they extended it in the first place.

They are trademarking him so no one can use his name and maybe his likeness to some degree
That's it, there's no other action needed. The mouse keeps the one thing that's important to them (and they'll probably do it for other characters like Donald later on) and they won't get bitched at for extending copyright forever like they have been
Hell, there's rumors that Oswald is actually in the public domain right now the same way Steamboat Willie could be and that's why Disney quickly threw together a bunch of trademarks

Mickey, as he first appeared in Steamboat Willie, will be public domain. Only things that appeared in that cartoon will be usable. But their names will be trademarked, so you wouldn't be able to call him Mickey Mouse.

They seem to be pushing Rudish Mickey more and more as the face of the Mickey brand.

Because we'd have probably hit the Disney Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs being public domain by now if they hadn't extended.

So can I sell shit with Mickey if I use the 20's design and call him something else?

I'm unsure about the areas where trademark and copyright bump against each other, but certainly you'll be able to sell t-shirts with clips from steamboat willie on them.

This will be interesting to see in around a decade how Disney responds and the internet in turn responds
They can keep the trademark to Mickey and then the short isn't important. But they can't reasonably trademark every character in Snow White and they have no rights to solely distribute the film or "vault" it or whatever

Steamboat Willie, Galloping Gaucho and Plane Crazy would all be public domain that year. And any ambiguity regarding the PD status of Oswald and his Disney stuff would also be gone then.

2025, we start getting Silly Symphonies falling into Public Domain with Skeleton Dance being from 1929.

Death to Disney.

YOU CANT DOUSE THE MOUSE

Attached: cyrus-romanes-mm.jpg (1920x2655, 539.47K)

Also that Oswald series will probably come out and they'll milk him for a few years before the copyright expires
Now you know why they added blue pants to him in 2006, there's no reasonable way in our lifetimes that aspect becomes PD

No. You can only use frames from Steamboat Willie and the other cartoons in public domain, and even then that's going to get you a cease and desist from the mouse

It wasn't just them, it was all the studios that wanted it extended, along with people who held rights to things. Like there was the story of George Gershwin's heirs being reluctant to let Rhapsody in Blue go PD, but now it went PD this year.

>Does anyone know what The Mouse is currently doing regarding this?

Nothing, its more profitable for Disney for copyright to expire (especially music rights)

>They still have him trademarked, no one can make new content about him for profit without their permission

Nope. Trademark doesn't prevent people creating stuff with public domain characters. Anyone can trademark stuff.
I could trademark Robin Hood Haircuts, Hercules Hotdogs or Snow White Applesauce. And when Mickey Mouse is public domain anybody else can trademark Mickey for their specific narrow usage.
Trademark means that Warner Bros can't make a Mickey Mouse cartoon and pretend its official Disney content, but that is not a high bar to clear, all they'd have to do is make the tagline 'Warner Bros' Mickey Mouse'. Boom, Warner Bros can make a Mickey Mouse cartoon AND file their own trademark and own copyright of their new Mickey material.

Attached: tumblr_ab8927ebdb975239a815aeb838920cb4_08005b72_1280.png (1010x728, 213.79K)

>Hell, there's rumors that Oswald is actually in the public domain right now the same way Steamboat Willie

All of Oswald's original cartoons have entered public domain status, but the status of ideas within a work themselves is a separate copyright to an actual work.

This is kind of a problem that has risen due to no works entering the public domain for decades and decades. Nobody back in the 1920s even had the thought that characters and ideas within a work should be a separate copyright to the work themselves, and people had to manually copyright works and pay for their copyright renewal.

This has left many popular cartoon and comic characters is a little legal grey area, because theoretically people should be able to create with anything in the public domain, but that practice would mean all the major characters would lose their copyright status over a few shitty throwaway comics or forgotten toons. The law is more concerned with making society work than following a strict letter of the law, so you can expect any court would rule that these characters are still protected by copyright.

Thus in theory that would also extend to Oswald. Even though all his old cartoons are in public domain, Disney would probably argue they never had the chance to file copyright on the character itself, because that concept didn't exist back then, so they should get to keep him. And I believe the courts would agree, seeing as it will only be a few years before he's officially public domain anyway.

Peg Leg Pete will enter public domain next year.

>Nothing, its more profitable for Disney for copyright to expire (especially music rights)
Also it makes it easier for them to adapt more things into animated movies. They built their empire off of animating public domain folktales, they'll probably find early 20th century stories apt for adaptation. Sure, Disney will lose Steamboat Willie, but it's not just them who will have lost their copyrights; their rivals probably have IPs ripe for the picking.

Peg Leg Pete in the bear design no one remembers

>Thus in theory that would also extend to Oswald. Even though all his old cartoons are in public domain, Disney would probably argue they never had the chance to file copyright on the character itself, because that concept didn't exist back then, so they should get to keep him. And I believe the courts would agree, seeing as it will only be a few years before he's officially public domain anyway.
Dude, literally where in the hell did you pull that from? Because, despite not being a copyright lawyer but having read up a little on the subject, there is no way in hell that that argument would ever pass in a court of law.

*despite not being a copyright lawyer but having read up a little on the subject, I bet my left nut that there is no way in hell*

Got a question, what is the big deal with copyright and also trademark expiring? Yes if a property hits the Public Domain others can utilize it and make their own material.

So what? That doesn't stop Disney for example from making new Mickey Mouse cartoons or movies or having him show up in Kingdom Hearts for example. And people aren't stupid, they know that Mickey Mouse media made by the Walt Disney company is the official version and no one would get confused if say Viacom made their own Mickey Mouse shorts.

I for one never was confused about Mickey Mouse and Daisy Duck showing up in Fritz the Cat as shadowy silhouettes with their eyes exposed. The people know whose media is actually the main big deal when it comes to characters, especially as recognizable as Mickey Mouse. So if Disney is worried that someone would make media that would tarnish Mickey Mouse and their company, then they are worried over nothing.

One of the main aspects of copyright is that you have a monopoly on the expression you create. And when you have valuable IP, and make a metric fuckton of money from licensing it and making merchandise, you would obviously want to have that exclusive ownership for as long as you can.
Yes, Disney can still use Mickey Mouse, but so can everyone else. And that's what they specifically don't want. They want it all to themselves. If anything, they would absolutely love to have it forever.

Either way, I'm glad that Mickey Mouse (well, at least the Steamboat Willie version) will become public domain. No one should have exclusive ownership of a character for as long as Disney did. It's a disgrace, keeping him under lock and key for so long. The whole point of copyright is to incentivize artists to create with a limited, while also eventually letting those creations to benefit and inspire the public, letting them freely build of those artists' works.
Public domain is the rule, copyright is the exception.

Having copyright over a creative work facilitates the kind of centralized planning and control that large corporations value very highly.

>implying disney won't bribe everyone to lock mickey in their grasps

>Does anyone know what The Mouse is currently doing regarding this?

Preparing to just buy the entire planet outright.

>If we're lucky Disney as a corporate empire will implode

Lol no, if that happens Disney will just nuke the whole planet. If they can't have it then nobody can.

>ITT: People who have no fucking idea how IP laws work giving their expert opinion on IP laws.

Attached: 1272541943689.gif (491x324, 45.73K)

Abolish intellectual property laws

This. I am an unimagantive bum so I should be able to use the ideas of creative people

Disney literally made a career out of adapting public domain stories you moron. All art is derivative, no exception.