Copyright and Trademark Law

The short version is that the earliest version of Micky Mouse, as depicted in the animated short Steamboat Wille, is now public domain as 95 years (the current term of copyright) from publication back in 1928 has run out.

However any elements that were introduced later, which include a lot of iconic elements of the character such as the red outfit, white gloves, and several important supporting characters like Goofy and Pluto, are still under copyright and will remain so until 95 years have elapsed since their introduction.

In addition Disney still maintains the trademark over the character, but that doesn't prevent the character's use in independent media, just it's use to represent a business.

Edited by Falrinn on Jan 3rd 2024 at 2:18:26 AM

There was a 1928 poster made with the red outfit, so you probably can use it as well.

Also, the white gloves are present in the title cards of Steamboat Willie and Gallopin Gauncho but I'm not sure whether the cards were present in the original 1928 prints or if they were added later.

To expand things beyond Mickey Mouse, here’s a list of things entering public domain in 2024 in different countries:

https://publicdomainreview.org/blog/2024/01/public-domain-day-2024/

In New Zealand and parts of Asia and Africa (where copyright extends to 50 years after the death of the creator), this includes the works of JRR Tolkien. This would have been the case in Canada as well except that we let them bully us into signing a law last year that adopted their copyright system (95 years since creation of the work). Anything that was already public domain remains so; this means that nothing new will enter public domain in Canada for decades.

In the US, the main things entering public domain other than Mickey Mouse are The House at Pooh Corner, All Quiet on the Western Front and Lady Chatterley’s Lover. And also The Call of Cthulhu, which I get the impression has been treated as if it were public domain for much longer - references to it are everywhere.

Edited by Galadriel on Jan 3rd 2024 at 6:30:27 AM

HP Lovecraft's stuff lands in this odd spot where it was/is under copyright...but no one is sure who actually holds it. It maybe got left to his aunt who did not have any heirs and didn't mention it in her own will, August Derleth claimed them by buying the rights to Weird Fiction (a magazine) but Lovecraft didn't give Weird Fiction full rights so those rights would allow for reprinting full issues of the magazine, but not full ownership of the contained stories, and it's a whole confusing mess with none of the people actively claiming rights having any viable legal trail to justify it.

The result is that, because there's no one who can reasonably claim to be the copyright holder without getting into a huge legal battle with the other several hundred people who also claim it, the whole mess collapses into "it might as well be public domain." Because if no one is in a position to claim or enforce copyright, it basically doesn't exist. The only exception is Chaosium somehow having the enforceable copyright to the use of Lovecraft's stuff in table top roleplaying games, but nowhere else.

There's a lot of movies from the 30s in the same boat, where the trail of copyright is so confusing that even the actual copyright holders are unaware that they hold it.

Edited by Zendervai on Jan 3rd 2024 at 10:13:18 AM

IANAL, but I think what they specifically have is a trademark on the Call of Cthulhu RPG, so anyone who might be making a Cthulhu game has to make sure they can't be confused with Chaosium's work. For example, Ken Hite made Trail of Cthulhu and that was fine because it clearly didn't infringe Chaosium's trademark and the underlying IP is de facto public domain.

(Plus, at this point, if anyone did try to enforce Lovecraft's IP, not only would every other claimant get involved, but any reasonable judge would likely look at how much Mythos stuff has been commercially published since, and call the copyright lapsed because nobody's enforced it.)

Trail of Cthulhu is made under a license from Chaosium. Like, for real. Chaosium is the like, one entity that seems to be able to actually defend their copyright (and they frequently do, they won a case against Wizards of the Coast) because it’s really specific to table-top games. They also, apparently, allow people to get a license from them for really cheap.

Chaosium’s copyright only extends past the TTRPG space if something directly borrows their gameplay system.

Edited by Zendervai on Jan 3rd 2024 at 11:06:37 AM

to give an sliver of such works, Demonbane, Nyatko, Persona 2, one Episode of Billy and Mandy, Magika and to a lesser extent Fate/ all have references to the mythos.

An episode of Justice League also featured an expy of Cthulhu to which the producers eventually realized they probably could've just used him outright.

Smite also added him as a playable character in 2020.

He also appears in a Survival Geeks arc, and is one of the few references played completely seriously. The characters adopt one of his spawn as a pet, who they name Howard.

When Tolkien's works enter the public domain, this only include the ones he himself published right? Like, since Christopher Tolkien was the one who actually published The Silmarillion, that wouldn't be public domain, correct?

I've been trying to figure out when Citizen Kane enters public domain.

The Silmarillion was written before LOTR, but published after, right? What would the copyright situation be on that?

Doing the math... 2037.

Edited by lbssb on Jan 4th 2024 at 4:06:10 AM

When it was published, because that's when it went on record.

From my brief googling, it looks like the Silmarillion will go into the public domain along with the rest of JRR Tolkien's works in 2044. I suspect the question of how to works edited and published posthumously interact with copyright law is a solved legal issue.

Sidenote: The rule for works made by an individual is "life of author plus 70 years", which is different from works produced by a company, which is 95 years from the date of publication. A consequence is that an author's entire body of work, minus anything they were explicitly hired to write, enters the public domain all at once.

Why 95? When an entire century make more sense.

Because US copyright is a hulking monstrosity that was constantly pushed further to protect corporate interests.

It certainly didn't start at 95.

One thing I haven't seen brought up- or maybe it's obvious to everyone except me- is the reason why Disney didn't even try for another copyright extension bill. I think it's due to the internet. The last copyright extension passed in 1998, with significant controversy, and the previous one doesn't seem to have been controversial at all, based on its Wikipedia page- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1976. Now, 1976 is firmly pre-internat, and 1998 clearly falls under the category of "early internet", and is specifically long before Youtube. As such I suspect that people at the time did not imagine that public-domain works could be effectively free, but rather that they would still have to buy them, but now anyone with publishing equipment could make and sell them. That is a very different trade-off, and one the average person might well feel less strongly about. Now that everyone's online and you can post an entire public-domain movie on You Tube if you wish, if Disney tried to get another extension, I think they would likely fail and get a lot of bad publicity.

It's already into the realm of "...okay, so why is it so important the copyright period is so long?" It's not like Disney's making bank on Steamboat Willie and the copyright period is so long that you get cases like great grandchildren ending up with control of a property sometimes. I get the idea of copyright lasting beyond the death of the creator (because it can basically serve as income for any still alive spouses or whatever) but when it lasts so far beyond the life of the creator that it could be primary income for grandkids who were born after the original creator died into retirement age, something's really wonky.

For Disney specifically, it was to maintain brand integrity, but like...again, is it really that important to hoard everything like that?

Edited by Zendervai on Jan 4th 2024 at 5:03:03 AM

Yes.

Disney is extremely protective of their brand and copyright, and has been (at least allegedly) since Uncle Walt was running it. It's not a rational homo economicus decision so much as it is a matter of corporate culture, and Disney's legal department has a reputation to maintain as The Dreaded.

IIRC there actually is a downside even to companies like Disney for copyright never expiring which might be why they stopped, but unsure if that's the case.

Disney's bread and butter were adaptation of PD works and film. Even with Star Wars and Marvel under their belts they'd prolly prefer to not pay though the nose for material to adapt if they could help it.

Disney Metropolis Musical when?

I think for Disney it was a mix of that, plus the fact that Micky Mouse is a much smaller portion of their brand given all the acquisitions the company made over the last couple decades, and they knew that in the current political environment such an extension bill was not guaranteed to pass and guaranteed to generate a lot of bad publicity no matter how much money they threw at it.

The previous copyright bill also predates the first Kingdom Hearts game, which I can imagine had some influence; the fact that one of the better versions of Mickey Mouse came from letting a Japanese game developer work with him is a fairly easy argument against extending copyright to specifically help Disney.

Or at least that's an argument I would make, but I am not a copyright lawyer.

It wouldn't be deemed relevant. Disney can choose to do whatever they want with what they own, and they still maintain a really tight leash over what SE is allowed to do with the Disney properties. Plus stuff like how the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate was such a pain to deal with that Tarzan never appears again after the first game.

It's not an example of how the public domain is good, it's an example of how sometimes going out of your wheelhouse can work out.

Edited by Zendervai on Jan 5th 2024 at 8:47:42 AM