CDMX.- There’s nothing sweet and cuddly about the way The Walt Disney Co. protects its characters.
This is the company that once forced a Florida daycare to remove an unauthorized Minnie Mouse mural. In 2006, Disney told a stonemason that carving Winnie the Pooh on a child’s headstone would violate his copyright.
But for the first time, one of the company’s star characters, Mickey himself, will enter the public domain. Steamboat Willie, the 1928 short film that introduced Mickey to the world, will lose copyright protection in the United States and a few other countries at the end of next year, leaving fans wondering: How is he going to answer disney?
“I see on the Reddit forums and on Twitter that people — the creatives — are getting excited about the possibilities, that somehow you’re going to be able to use the character anyway,” said Aaron J. Moss, a partner at Greenberg Glusker at Los Angeles, specializing in copyright and trademarks.
“But that’s a misunderstanding.”
The matter is more complicated than it seems, and those who try to take advantage of expiring rights could end up in a legal mousetrap.
Only one of the copyright expires. This is the original version of Mickey Mouse in Steamboat Willie, an eight-minute short with little plot. This Mickey does not speak and has a rat-like nose, rudimentary eyes (no pupils), and a long tail. He can be naughty. In one scene, he torments a cat. In another, he uses a terrified goose as a trombone.
Later iterations of the character remain protected, including the sweeter, rounder Mickey in red shorts and white gloves, better known to today’s audiences. These will enter the public domain at various times over the next few decades.
“Disney has frequently modernized the character, not necessarily as a form of copyright management, at least initially, but to keep up with the times,” said Jane C. Ginsburg, an authority on intellectual property law who teaches at the University of Columbia.
The expiration of the Steamboat Willie rights means the black-and-white short can be screened without permission from Disney and even resold by third parties. However, there may not be much value left. The company uploaded it for free on YouTube years ago. It also means that anyone can make use of the movie and the original Mickey to create new stories and works.
Winnie the Pooh, another Disney property, offers a window into what could happen.
This year, the 1926 children’s book “Winnie-the-Pooh” by AA Milne entered the public domain. Recently, an amateur filmmaker shot a low-budget movie called Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, in which the fat bear runs wild. In one scene, Pooh and his friend Piglet use chloroform to incapacitate a bikini-clad woman in a hot tub, then run a car over her.
Disney can’t claim copyright infringement as long as the filmmaker sticks to the 1926 material and doesn’t use later elements. Pooh’s red shirt, for example, was added in the 1930s.
Here’s where things get tricky: Disney also has trademarks for its characters, including the Steamboat Willie version of Mickey Mouse, and the trademarks don’t expire as long as the companies continue to file the proper paperwork. Copyright covers a specific creation (unauthorized copying), but trademarks are designed to protect against consumer confusion, to offer you guarantees about the origin and quality of a creation.
Simply put, any public domain use of the original Mickey cannot be perceived as coming from Disney, Ginsburg explained. This protection is strong, he added, because the character, even in his primitive form, is closely associated with the company. People look at those ears and smile and “automatically associate it with Disney,” he said.
