Disney started producing films for a new animated character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, in 1927. | Mickey Mouse was conceived the next year during a cross-country train ride, according to the “official” company history. Walt Disney had just been forced to give up the Oswald rights to his ruthless New York distributor, who had exercised copyright control over the character. | On the ride back home to Los Angeles, Disney conjured up a little mouse named Mortimer. His wife, Lillian, thought the name too pompous and suggested Mickey. —Disney’s Mickey Mouse Set to Turn 75 (Yahoo!/AP)
On Tuesday, the Mickey Mouse character turns 75, which means that, had it not been for some recent legal changes in the implementation of copyright, the Mickey Mouse character would have entered the public domain, and the corporation would lose the rights to market him (just as today anybody can use characters such as Huckleberry Finn or Ebeneezer Scrooge).
When I started my Ph.D., I chose the time span of 1920-1950, becuase I thought that during my academic career, one by one all of the literary works that were created during that period would start falling out of copyright, which would mean that I could publish my own online editions of these works. But thanks to Disney, that’s not going to happen — Disney’s laywers managed to get the copyright laws extended for another 25 years. A few works that I studied did fall out of copyright before Sonny Bono (formerly of Sonny and Cher, and also the U.S. House of representatives) did his groovy legalistic magic.
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Thanks, Matt, for pointing out my oversimplification. Since the Little Mermaid uses Hans Christian Anderson's out-of-copyright characters, and The Jungle Book 1 and 2 both use Rudyard Kipling's out-of-copyright characters, the question is sort of moot. Unless I am mistaken, anyone can make a Jungle Book movie, but Disney still owns the copyright to, say, the song "The Bear Necessites" and the particular way Baloo is drawn. Margaret Mitchell's estate comissioned "Scarlett" as the sequel to "Gone with the Wind" specifically to protect their rights to use the characters from the book, even though if GWTW goes out of copyright anybody could print up and sell an edition. And yes, because Disney uses Mickey as part of their corporate identity, another organization couldn't use Mickey to sell, say, shaving cream. But Disney does stand to lose money becasue as of now they and they alone control those early films.
You probably know, Matt, that "Steamboat Willie" is a spoof on a Buster Keaton film called "Steamboat Bill, Jr." -- so The Mouse that Disney protects so fiercely got his start by spoofing another work of intellectual property.
I know you're trying to cover a lot of territory in just a paragraph, but it's worth noting that copyright!= trademark.
What this extension really means is that the early Disney works like "Steam Boat Willy" are unavailable for the public to use. Disney still uses Mickey as a trademark, which effectively means that no-one else is allowed to use him in their own brand of rodent-infested animation. Disney would lose nothing by having the early works enter public domain. The later films, like "Little Mermaid", may be a different story. I wonder if Disney has bothered to trademark all of it's characters from all of it's movies? I wonder if the recent string of sequels like "Jungle Book 2" and the like were an effort to make sure all of those characters remained under copyright?