Disney could lose Mickey Mouse
 

Steamboat Willie:



https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/mi...04/id/1077219/

Re: Disney could lose Mickey Mouse
 

Wait, what's that Walt?


https://thumbs.gfycat.com/VelvetyCla...restricted.gif

Taking all bets! Exactly HOW MANY MONTHS after the public domain release will their be a Mickey porn movie? January has a 1 in 10000 chance!

Re: Disney could lose Mickey Mouse
 

Good.

Re: Disney could lose Mickey Mouse
 

Hasn't this come up like X number of times, and each time it's delayed? Or is this different?

Yes. I think Mickey's expiration date passed in the 1990s sometime but for some reason Disney got away with extending it. I don't remember how.

Re: Disney could lose Mickey Mouse
 

Based on my understanding of the rules, stuff like Superman should've been public domain starting in 2008. I don't know all the ins and outs but it's not surprising that giants like Disney and WB have found ways around the rules.

Re: Disney could lose Mickey Mouse
 

Trademark laws are so muddied in America that there's literally no way people won't get sued into oblivion for using him, even with the copyright lapsing.

And DIsney spearheaded a change to copyright law the last time he was about to expire. I don't see that happening again, but I do see lawyers earning their pay.

Re: Disney could lose Mickey Mouse
 

And I will assume they will delay it again. Because clearly Disney should have the exclusive rights to an image they've already branded across the brains of multiple generations, and that they have already built an empire of billions and billions of dollars upon.



Pretty much everyone who was responsible for the creation of Mickey Mouse is dead. They made their money. They got their dues. So why some monolithic corporation, now populated by people who have virtually nothing to do with the creative process with which this was born, and who basically spend all of their time gobbling up the intellectual properties of others who don't have the same clout as them, can continue to dictate how their shitty cartoon character can be used by the public is beyond me.



Oh, that's right. Because we can't do anything to infringe on the rights of a business who clearly wants to have a monopoly on the entertainment industry.

This looks to be most likely, at least looking at this quote for what hypothetically might happen after the copyright expires.



"You can use the Mickey Mouse character as it was originally created to create your own Mickey Mouse stories or stories with this character," he told the Guardian. "But if you do so in a way that people will think of Disney — which is kind of likely because they have been investing in this character for so long — then in theory, Disney could say you violated my copyright."

Essentially they can lose the copyright, but with their army of lawyers, make it a total legal nightmare for anyone who dares to use it in any way that might hypothetically cast Disney in a negative light (which is just a vague enough notion to include the use of Mickey Mouse in virtually any way at all)


Basically, **** Disney. **** them right in those big Mickey Mouse ears of theirs.

Hoping for this to result in a Bruceploitation-style movement with the Mouse getting into increasingly wacky, un-PC and dirt cheap adventures. Mickey Mouse Fights Back From The Grave, The Rodent Lives Again, My Name Called Mickey, etc.

Whenever this comes up, I'm always told it's just the original character design of Mickey Mouse (i.e. Steamboat Willie looking Micky Mouse. Though, I guess if it's been getting delayed that long, if it actually happened, maybe it'd be the first decade or so of the first mouse designs). So, the gloves, red shorts, and the facial features as we know them would probably be off limits still (barring whenever they were introduced).


Like (at least in the 90s), you could have a Frankenstein comic because the book is public domain, but you couldn't throw bolts in the neck because that was a Universal movie idea, and thus copyrighted.

The funny thing is, I know someone who watches a twitch channel of time cartoons, and I think apparently there was a Mickey-sploitation thing going on back in the Steamboat Willie days.

Heh. Hadn't thought of that, but that would be a legal use of the "Steamboat Willie" Mickey Mouse (the longer snout, black hands, etc). The modern Mickey Mouse could not be used.

Yes, I'm pretty sure that's the way it is. Steamboat Willie could not be morphed into the more modern Mickey.

It's Steamboat Willie they are clinging to? As if anyone even wants that.


Sure, it's a culturally important artifact. But it has close to zero relevance on modern culture. Has no real symbolic value.



I won't be happy until the time comes for them to surrender all of their mascots. The stuff they built their empire upon. Which I'm sure will come at a time in American history where Disney's offices are guarded by machine gun turrets and mustard gas, and at that point maybe there will be more important things to worry about than copywrite infringement

I hope all the inevitable Mouseploitation movies have cheaper, more tasteless riffs on Steamboat Willie in the vein of the bargain basement ripoffs of the Game of Death pagoda sequence.