Inspired by a thread on copyright protection extension, which is most notably done with Disney.
That got me wondering if there were any precedents for what will happen when Mickey does fall out of copyright. Has there been a character this well known, this well established, this beloved, and this strongly associated with a single company (not individual) that’s still around?
I can’t think of any. Is there? What do you think the commercial and legal landscape would look like? Will any of Disney’s fears about consumers thinking they’re making or officially endorsing hardcore animated furry porn featuring Mickey come about?
Although perhaps you’re looking more at the consequences of IP which has been commercialised in a modern sense.
Setting aside the real prospect of a further extension of copyright under the mechanism of the Sonny Bono Act, Disney et al have many, many trademarks protecting dear old Mickey.
So even if the copyright falls into the public domain, commercialising the subject matter of the trademarks would be extremely difficult.
I’m surprised that Mickey Mouse would still be considered “beloved.” He’s archaic. They’ve got Stitch and the Frozen girls. They really shouldn’t worry about it.
Shakespeare, Holmes, and Tarzan were or belonged to individuals. I deliberately said companies and not individuals in my OP because I can imagine further ranging consequences for large corporations more than single individual creators.
Buster Brown. The comic strips are out of copyright, though the shoe company still uses the trademark.
Note that you don’t copyright a character; you copyright a work. If Disney lost copyright on “Steamboat Willie” (and ignoring trademark issues), all that would mean is that you could show or copy “Steamboat Willie” without Disney’s permission.
Also, let’s lay to rest the myth that Disney was the impetus behind the copyright extension. Adolph Hitler was. Note that the extension took place 50 years after his death, when Mein Kampf was due to lose copyright in Europe. The Government of Munich, which held copyright and did not want the book reprinted, lobbied the Berne Convention to extend the copyright term. The Copyright Extension Act in the US was only to put the US in line with the Berne Convention. Certainly Disney supported it, but if it weren’t for Hitler, there would have been no reason to extend it.
To repeat what TYphoonSignal8 said, there are no consequences because of trademark protection. Mickey Mouse and every other corporate character you can think of are trademarked and will remain so after the copyright on their earliest works runs out. All that will mean is that the individual works can be sold with asking permission or paying royalties. There’s a caveat in which certain character traits introduced in public domain works can be freely used but that’s a tough line to hew to.
I’m sure huge numbers of animated furry porns with Mickey Mouse exists today. Disney has to find them before it can send a lawyer after them. If they become legal, nobody will notice the difference.
Some characters are works. In fact, a lot of them are. The Batmobile is both a trademark and a character protected as a creative work under copyright law.
I can’t imagine a time when the works of George Gershwin would totally fall into the public domain, the Gershwin Estate is very aggressive in their pursuit of copyright protection. Some of the works have restated the titles and attributions on pieces to reflect George AND Ira Gershwin. George passed in 1937. Ira died in 1983. So that pushes the PD date further into the future, at which time they’ll figure out something else, I’m sure. That being said, some versions of Gershwin’s works will probably fall into public domain at some point; for example, Rhapsody In Blue, which was originally published by George Gershwin alone in, I believe, reduced piano format in 1924. The Sonny Bono Act extension gives the Gershwin estate until 2019 for that version. Some versions of Gershwin’s works might be in public domain outside the US, where copyright laws are different, but I bet not so much as you might expect.
Would also bet the companies set up for estates of famous people – like Marilyn Monroe and Elvis, to name just two – are equally vigorous in their protection of trademark and copyright.
As near as I can tell, all the sites that store old music (like theLester Levy Sheet Music Collection at Johns Hopkins) still only allows for PDF distribution of titles prior to 1924, the same it’s been for a very long time.
I got interrupted earlier; there’s an important point I didn’t get to.
Say that Disney loses not just copyright on Mickey Mouse but trademarks rights as well. What are the “farther ranging consequences” for the corporation as compared to the individuals that leaper thinks have it easier?
None. This is a serious error of logic. Disney’s annual revenue is over $55 billion dollars. Its market cap is $168 billion. How much of that would Disney lose? My guess is less than the rounding to the nearest billion I made. Disney’s value lies in the multitude of characters it owns and the properties that exploit them, including both merchandise and theme parks. Mickey Mouse’s image is used heavily in the theme parks and on clothing and toys and comic books and the thousand other ways Disney has exploited it since the early 1930s, true. But that wouldn’t stop. Disney could continue to use it in every single way it now does without any trademark or copyright. It has a hundred years of brand investment in the Mouse. That will not go away just because other people would be able to use it. Mickey’s value hasn’t gone away now in all the decades that people have mocked it or parodied it or pornified it. Corporations have the *least *worry about losing copyright.
It’s individuals who face disaster. Holmes or Tarzan or Oz or Harry Potter or James Bond are one-hit wonders. Those individual authors or estates depend on licensing for their entire value. Losing that stops all future income. This is a profound difference to a corporate property that is one of hundreds or thousands.
I know people love to hate Disney. That shouldn’t make you lose all perspective and understanding on consequences.
Not exactly. Baum’s Oz books are in the public domain, but he had a number of successors and those books, and the characters they added, remain under copyright. All of those were under contract so that a portion of royalties stays in Baum’s estate.
Conan Doyle’s last Holmes stories were written after 1923, so they stay in copyright for a few more years.
Note that, while it’s also possible to lose a trademark, it’s through an entirely different process. Trademarks have no expiration date whatsoever, and can be maintained indefinitely. The way you lose a trademark is by not defending it. That’s why, whenever anyone uses Disney characters without permission, Disney’s lawyers send them those cease-and-desist letters: They’re defending their trademarks, because if they didn’t, they’d lose them.
Now, Disney is especially vigorous about this defense, so barring some huge changes in corporate management they’re not likely to lose any trademarks any time soon. But it has happened before to other companies. The best known example is “Aspirin”, which used to be a trademark of Bayer, but now can be used by any drug-maker, though that one is complicated a bit by international politics in the wake of WWII.
Though it’s not a character, an example of a corporation losing control of what had been a valuable copyright is the song “Happy Birthday to You”. Worth a lot more than “Steamboat Willie”, I expect.
The last trademark extension was to harmonize US and EU copyright laws. It had nothing to do with Disney lawyers pissing their pants over Steamboat Willie.
We’re not going to see an emergency copyright extension before 2024 to protect Disney from this disaster.
As has been mentioned, the only thing that will happen with Steamboat Willie goes into public domain is that anybody will be able to show Steamboat Willie. Yay! This beloved cartoon, which everyone wants to see, will finally be free, and the corporate fatcats at Disney won’t get a penny.
That doesn’t mean you’ll be able to sell Mickey Mouse branded merch, because Mickey is a trademark of Disney.
Vintage Mickey Mouse cartoons aren’t exactly a moneymaking powerhouse, so the ability to show old black and white Mickey cartoons without Disney getting a cut won’t mean a thing. The property is valuable to Disney amost solely as a trademark, not a character that appears in lucrative movies.
Again, Disney put an enormous amount of money into the campaigns of key congress-critters. Other studios did the same but Disney stood out in the amount of targeting.
So giving Disney “credit” for this is quite reasonable.
Also, the US and EU copyright laws are far from consistent! The idea that somehow most countries’ copyright laws are consistent is truly laughable.
I was on a Wikipedia page for some book the other day*. The article pointed out that it’s in the public domain in the EU but not the US. The differences in the ways they handle copyright extensions are the cause.
Over and over it is easy to find glaring examples of differences between US and UK copyright terms, nevermind the rest of Europe. King James Bible anyone?
So yeah, there’s going to be another copyright extension before Steamboat Willie goes PD.
This one was featured on the front page of Wikipedia.
The whole point of IP protection is to stop other people from using it. There would certainly be significant financial consequences for Disney if Wal-Mart and Target could create and sell their own lines of clothing with Mickey and Minnie without paying license fees to Disney, or if Nick Jr. could produce its own Mickey Mouse Club, or if Six Flags could have Disney cartoon characters and princesses walking around its parks.
Oh, and the OP’s question is a perfect answer to why there’s a difference between copyright and trademark. It would be rough on Disney to lose the rights to Mickey because he’s such a symbol of the entire company… and that’s exactly the sort of thing that trademarks are for, and why trademarks don’t expire.
Nor would this have been a strange concept to the Founding Fathers, as there are some live trademarks out there that are older than our country. The tea I’m drinking now is from a company founded in 1706, which still uses some of the same trademarks they used back then.
Yes. But they could only use the elements of the character that are in the public domain. So to the extent that Mickey Mouse has protectable character elements that are different from Steamboat Willie, those would be off limits still.