Mickey Mouse enters public domain on January 1, but Disney has a plan to protect him

The entertainment culture in the world of cinema, animation, and literature is reaching an age of works that have accompanied us for decades, which we have linked to a brand or a company, but the passage of time does not forgive and everything ends up in the public domain. As of January 1, 2024, Mickey Mouse will be in the public domain, because in the United States, a work is considered public when 95 years have passed since its publication, and thus the copyright expires. This is the case of ‘Steamboat Willie,’ the first appearance of Mickey Mouse, a short film directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, released in 1928.

You may ask, is there any chance that Disney will protect its characters? The feeling is that characters like Mickey Mouse, Minnie, Donald, Goofy, and company are less common these days, and for decades they were part of our lives and were a regular feature in all sorts of series, productions, comics... Mickey Mouse is now in the public domain, yes, but the first version of him, the one that appears in ‘Steamboat Wilie’, that animated mouse in black and white so characteristic, for now, the rest of the versions that have appeared over the years are still protected by copyright.

Disney released the following statement: “Ever since Mickey Mouse’s first appearance in the 1928 short film Steamboat Willie, people have associated the character with Disney’s stories, experiences, and authentic products. That will not change when the copyright in the Steamboat Willie film expires. We will, of course, continue to protect our rights in the more modern versions of Mickey Mouse and other works that remain subject to copyright, and we will work to safeguard against consumer confusion caused by unauthorized uses of Mickey and our other iconic characters.”

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Disney and copyrights

It is not the first time that a Disney character or one related to the American company enters the public domain, and on January 1, 2022, it was Winnie the Pooh who lived this situation and Bambi is another of those who has also gone through this process. In the case of the character created in 1926 by the British writer Alan Alexander Milne, they have already taken advantage of his figure to create a horror film called “Blood & Honey”, which uses the universe of the lovable bear and his friends in a grotesque way and with the sole purpose of attracting attention, using a prominent license that is already in the public domain.

Mickey Mouse is also a trademark that represents Disney almost entirely, and unlike copyrights, trademarks never expire as long as they remain in use and registered. As the company’s mascot, he remains the company’s trademark, but despite this, the Supreme Court has ruled that companies cannot use trademarks to avoid the public domain. We will have to pay attention to everything that happens around Mickey Mouse and the first version of the same, Disney will surely try to prevent something similar to what happened with Winnie the Pooh.