Posted in: Disney XD, Disney+, Movies, TV | Tagged: copyright, disney, mickey mouse, Minnie Mouse, public domain

Mickey Mouse Has a Date with Public Domain Soon (But There's A Catch)

Disney characters Mickey Mouse & Minnie Mouse will finally enter the public domain in January 2024 - but only early takes on the characters.

It was the day Disney did their best to put off for the longest time, allowing their signature character Mickey Mouse to enter the public domain with other original works created in 1928. Come January 1, 2024, fans will be able to do what they want with the character – but only the earliest incarnation (we're talking the Steamboat Willie), with Disney losing exclusive copyright over the earliest versions of the characters. Mickey has been the symbol of the copyright war for generations. Joining Mickey are Minnie Mouse and Winnie the Pooh character Tigger (created by A. A. Milne and most famously associated with Disney). Other notable 1928 works include D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, and Buster Keaton's The Cameraman.

One of the most famous to incur Disney's wrath in court was Dan O'Neill, who wrote the underground comic book Air Pirates Funnies in 1971, which showed Mickey drug running and performing salacious activities with Minnie, which the Walt Disney Company wasn't amused by his parody, suing him. "It's still a crime for me," O'Neill told Variety. "If I draw a picture of Mickey Mouse, I owe Walt Disney a $190,000 fine, $10,000 more for legal fees, and a year in prison."

The irony is as fiercely protective as Disney has been on their original creations, so much of their empire was built on the public domain, including capitalizing on Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame in a 1996 feature adaptation, Robin Hood, Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol (1983 & 2009), Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book (1967 & 2016), J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan (1953 & 2023), and more. One popular genre that makes great use of the public domain is horror, with works from Seth Grahame-Smith and his take on Jane Austen with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

When Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh entered the public domain in 2020, Rhys Frake-Waterfield wrote and directed Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, which turned the title character and best friend Piglet into slasher villains with a 2024 sequel introducing Tigger into the fold to time with the copyright expiration. As Frake-Waterfield told us, he was careful to avoid certain depictions from the Disney incarnation of the characters. For more, including a comprehensive history of how Disney influenced U.S. copyright now, you can check out the background piece in its entirety here.

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