Copyright and Trademark Law

My last line makes it seem like my argument is a legal argument, when it's really a argument that would be directed at people writing the legislation. The audience who needs to be convinced for a copyright extension isn't the courts, but Congress.

I don't think that would work either. "Public domain is good because sometimes companies collaborate to make unusual things they wouldn't make on their own" doesn't follow. You'd need to pull from actual examples.

Only the Steamboat Willie era version of Mickey is public domain now, right? Or at least, that's what they would argue if you used any other Mickey.

Steamboat Willie era Mickey isn't that valuable. Something like Fantasia era Mickey would probably be seen as way more important.

Yeah it's just the Steamboat Willie version right now. However unless someone does a 1:1 copy of a later version it will be hard for Disney to enforce the copyright on those versions in practice.

That being said, I'd argue that nowadays Micky is more valuable to Disney as a Trademark then as a copyright. Actual Micky Mouse media is a tiny portion of Disney's business, and the Trademark means they are the only ones who can use him as a corporate icon.

Yeah, there's going to be a few works thrown up just to be contrary, Disney will smack down the ones dumb enough to use white gloves and probably ignore the rest.

As for Tarzan, the character's in the PD now and has been for a while (along with his earlier stories), but Edgar Rice Burroughs' estate are known for aggressive litigation and generally being a pain in the ass to deal with. They'd lose if it actually went to court, but nobody wants to spend the money it'd take to "put the ram to the wall" as a Reddit thread put it.

Something I've mentioned is that Mickey Mouse is already a Fountain of Expies and primarily a symbol of the era that produced him and a symbol of Disney Corporation.

In other words, the ability to use Mickey Mouse doesn't exactly open up a world of possibilities we didn't have already.

Mickey Mouse in might only be a small portion of Disney's entertainment side, but he's still merchandised out the wazoo, plus being a fixture of the theme parks (as far as I know), so Mickey definitely still has value.

They still have the trademark on him, so they can still do that.

On some level the bigger thing is that this likely sees the end of Disney backed changes to copyright length, it’s not what becomes public domain today that’s the huge thing, it’s that the clock is truly ticking now on everything else they’ve made.

Yeah this means that in a few decades we won't have to deal with stuff like Konami changing the name of the Cinderella card because it veered too close to the movie

Oh and maybe seeing Mickey mouse in Fate like I joked earlier. (Sans key blade ofc)

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Jan 5th 2024 at 12:49:19 PM

Cinderella as a fairytale is already in public domain,that they blatantly based their card off the Disney version which is all sorts of lazy

also I'm alarmed by many people now genuinely believe that Micky Mouse himself is now in public domain

It's because it's technically true to an extent, the original design itself can be used but the issue is that many of the iconic elements were introduced later and are thus still copyrighted (the White Gloves, the Red Shorts, the Keyblades, the the Voice is still in the Disney Vault)

Also as already mentioned there is still the trademark. That alone prevents something from truly entering the PD as a concept independent from the works that introduced them.

Also regarding that card. TBF, It was originally made for a filler arc and wasn't intended to be released in the actual OCG at the time. It took 2 decades for it to be a real card. (That reminds me. Is Pinocchio a fairy tale?)

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Jan 5th 2024 at 1:18:56 AM

> Is Pinocchio a fairy tale?

It has a fairy therefore..yes!

No. It’s based on an Italian children’s book from 1883, which is public domain.

To my understanding: Mickey Mouse is technically a public domain character.

However, it's sort of a weird case where it has to be an adaption of Steamboat Willie and the like. In essence, it has to be your Mickey, not Disney's Mickey.

Also the red shorts are in the public domain, there's contemporary color illustrations of Mickey that were released at the same time as the short. About the only difference is the gloves, which were yellow.

But I think they were white in the steamboat willie title card so you could make a plausible argument to the contrary.

Even if the law is on your side that one, you can bet Disney would make your life a living hell if you tried to pull it off.

I predict that there'll be a few Mickey works popping up like mushrooms in the near future to test all of this; maybe a Mickey x Oswald porn animation. (To those who can't unsee that now: you're welcome!)

Steamboat Willie aside, what else has entered the public domain now.

Picking some works at random that seem to be important: more early versions of Winnie the Pooh stories (including the first written appearance of Tigger), All Quiet On The Western Front, the original version of Threepenny Opera (so the also the original recording of Mack the Knife), and the original recording of Yes, We have no bananas!

So if you want to write a story about how fruit sellers had all of their bananas stolen by Tigger set to the backstop of World War 1, feel free to do so.

Yes, our bananas have entered the public domain! :)

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13196849890A49260100&page=1

Sharing this old thread I found.

Doesn't seem like that thread is needed for anything this thread can't do, so I see no point in necroing it.

Don't plan to. Just wanna raise it in case someone wanders.

I can ask a mod to lock it.

When I created this thread, I did so specifically because what we had in OTC was a patchwork of mostly inactive threads that all delt with copyright and trademark from a specific angle and as far as I could tell none of them were obviously appropriate places to discuss the big copyright news that was happening at the time (Steamboat Willie becoming public domain).

So I felt it made more sense to start a new thread that unified all copyright and trademark law discussion into a single place. Partly so there would be a place to discuss copyright and trademark law regardless of if the specific subject was relevant to whatever angle the OP had gone with, and partly because there just isn't enough discussion on the topic to sustain multiple threads.

When Superman's copyright gets to it's expiration date I hope Warner-Brothers lets it go instead of being dicks about it, I want Superman to become a cultural institution like Dracula or Sherlock Holmes.