Disney loses famous Mickey Mouse copyright in 2024, along with many others

What a way to end Disney's 100th Anniversary

For those who haven't figured it out, it's the first Mickey Mouse design to end up in the public domain, not the character itself

It astounds me that Disney is against copyright infringement when their entire early catalog was based upon work written by other people, primarily in western Europe (eg. Grimm brothers etc.)

They didn’t “lose” anything, it just finally went to Public Domain after 95 years

Disney has become the epitome of "you either die a hero, or live long enough to become the villain."

Let me make this perfectly clear; Disney’s only losing the old version of Mickey, they’re not losing Mickey entirely.

I love the fact that CBS still had to pay for the footage since they published it one day ahead of New Years Eve

God it is about time this happened. Every single time it came close to this Disney would somehow find a way to extend copyright, to the point that the 14 year long term of copyright has become a term of Life of the Artist + 70 years, meaning that the maximum term is 180 years (assuming that the artist lives to 110, the oldest a human has been known to live), which is simply insane and subverts the purpose of copyright entirely. I do believe that Disney has tried to fight this, but a maximum term of 220 years sounds absurd even to those in Congress thank god.

They aren’t losing the trademark. They’re losing the copyright. Massive difference.

I'm so glad they acknowledged that Disney also just repackages older stories, they're built on works in the public domain

Copyright in America was created to put a LIMIT to the typical English guild perpetual appropriation of works. Its original term was 14 years with a single extension of 14 more years, after which it ensured entering the public domain for the promotion of arts and culture that would make derivative works of it (just like Disney and many others did). But corporate interests pushed this to a century or more, almost destroying its original purpose. This is why Lawrence Lessig and others came up with Creative Commons, so that authors have a choice to declare their works from Public Domain to different levels of reduced copyright. This is why you can use music in your videos online, heroes like Kevin MacLeod declared their works CC and you only need to give attribution OR pay a one fee of $30 per song.

For those who have no clue about this situation, It was actually the first design of Mickey Mouse to end up in Public Domain, not the character itself.

Finally someone mentioned how Disney exploited the public domain a lot to make their empire, meaning that Disney has no ground to complain about losing Mickey.

It's sickening that copyright expiration dates have been lengthened and lengthened at the behest of corporations like Disney.

I'm shocked they came out with All Quiet on the Western Front film two years ago... I imagine they could have waited two years to release and save a boatload on paying royalties to the copyright owner

About time, should be public domain ages ago. I suppose Disney can still continue to use all those assets if they want to, but so will other artists, and we may see some more quality works hopefully.

Can you imagine WB taking advantage of this and giving us another moment where Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse are together at the same time?

i don't think i've ever seen a news agency openly fire shots at a company like Disney in this way. directly pointing at Walt Disney using public domain works, and also how Disney played a part in IP extensions. Actually pretty respectable reporting here ngl.

So can restaurants sing happy birthday now?

I love just how quickly the internet responded to Mickey going public domain 😂