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As of today, the traditionally protective Walt Disney Company will have to deal with an onslaught of Mickey Mouse parodies, mockeries and likely rather explicit variations as the iconic character slips into the public domain.
Sorta.
In the sober light of 2024, Steamboat Willie, the 1928 short that effectively launched the empire that Walt built, can now be used by anyone and everyone. The legal status of Mickey and Minnie Mouse from Steamboat Willie and Plane Crazy, from earlier that same year, has been long fought over and probably not something Disney was looking forward too. Yet, in a new year that also sees Virginia Woolf’s groundbreaking Orlando, Charlie Chaplin’s The Circus, and AA Milne’s The House at Pooh Corner now in the public domain, if you are anticipating a Steamboat Willie free-for-all, think again.
Besides Disney being notoriously litigious, the color version that came into being in 1935’s The Band Concert, the Mickey of 2024 is a lot different than the non-speaking Mickey of Steamboat Willie in 1928. Evolving again and again over the decades, the brand icon that is today’s Mickey has a lot more meat on his bones, is full of many more smiles, has that chirpy voice, has a far less rough disposition, wears white gloves, and clearly looks a lot less a rat than the Steamboat Willie Mickey – and, to paraphrase MC Hammer: you can’t touch that.
“More modern versions of Mickey will remain unaffected by the expiration of the Steamboat Willie copyright, and Mickey will continue to play a leading role as a global ambassador for the Walt Disney Company in our storytelling, theme park attractions, and merchandise,” a Disney spokesperson said of the dos and don’ts of the sound synched film entering the public domain today. “We will, of course, continue to protect our rights in the more modern versions of Mickey Mouse and other works that remain subject to copyright, and we will work to safeguard against consumer confusion caused by unauthorized uses of Mickey and our other iconic characters.”
Then of course, there is the trademark, which is separate from copyright – and has no expiration.
As defined by the US Patent and Trademark Office, a trademark in these here United States is “a word, phrase, design, or a combination that identifies your goods or services, distinguishes them from the goods or services of others, and indicates the source of your goods or services. Copyright is “Artistic, literary, or intellectually created works, such as novels, music, movies, software code, photographs, and paintings that are original and exist in a tangible medium, such as paper, canvas, film, or digital format.”
First off, even as copyright arm-twisting and laws saw Steamboat Willie’s status extended to this year in 1998 thanks to Rep. Sonny Bono and the so-called Mickey Mouse Protection Act, Mickey Mouse the name and Minnie Mouse the name have long been trademarked by Disney. So, any designs on employing those monikers are DOA, regardless of Steamboat Willie entering the public domain at the stroke of midnight this morning.
In 2007, Disney revamped the Disney Animation Studios logo to include a snippet of Steamboat Willie’s Mickey. The Mouse House being what they are, and rightly so, trademarked that logo. That trademark was updated in early 2022, with the description reading: “The mark consists of a motion mark of an animator’s drawings visually flipping one after another and transitioning into an animated clip of a mouse character tapping his foot and whistling while holding a ship’s wheel, followed by the appearance of the wording WALT DISNEY ANIMATION STUDIOS underneath the animated mouse character.”
A top Tinesltown attorney notes that in the digital age, Mickey memes and mockery is widespread and has little impact on Disney’s image or bottom line. “Why waste your time playing Whac-a-Mole for legacy characters when you don’t have to?” the lawyer says. “The Mickey Mouse of 95 years ago is almost irrelevant in today’s market.”
“Not saying they should go after the knock-offs and parodies, (but) often companies like Disney give more attention to the infringement by trying to shut it down, instead of just ignoring it,” the Avenue of the Stars denizen states. “Most of these are novelties, a couple of days shelf life. Quickly forgotten.”
In a similar vein, pne entertainment finance exec stressed that not many kids these days (or for years) really clamor for Mickey Mouse these days, especially not the oldest black-and-white Steamboat Willie version. And he said Disney has been great at creating new characters for younger audiences over the years, so any financial hit would be pretty contained. Other parties may try, probably, will, to merchandise Mickey “and Disney will make it very miserable for them…It can’t have color, it can’t look like the modern Mickey.”
The sharpest leghold trap Disney can still put down to snare anyone trying to encroach on their Mickey territory is perception. Even though the original incarnation of AA Milne’s beloved character had slipped into the public dominion in 2022, no one in their right mind truly thought Disney was behind last year’s Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey and getting into slasher flicks. However, if there was to be a version of Steamboat Willie and/or Plane Crazy’s Mickey or Minnie that in any way lead consumers to believe it came from Disney or even implied as much, the Mouse House’s lawyer would shut that project down faster than Space Mountain in a thunderstorm.
Now, Disney being Disney, to take any bite out of pretenders to the throne and make a few bucks themselves, there has also been a boatload of merchandise around the Steamboat Willie Mickey and to a lesser degree Minnie as well – all trademarked. Further mudding the waters for potential infringers, the Bob Iger-run media giant put Steamboat Willie up online for all to see free of charge back in 2009 – to the apparent delight of over 13.5 million views as of today:
This being Hollywood, there’s a certain irony embedded in the history of all this.
Back in the last years of the Roaring Twenties, one of the biggest box office stars around was Buster Keaton, who brought out his Steamboat Bill, Jr on May 12, 1928.
Featuring the famous scene of the house façade falling around an unscathed Keaton, the comic genius’ 71-minute film got a rare less than stellar reception for Keaton from the ticketing buying public at the time. Now viewed as one of the all-time cinema greats, Steamboat Bill, Jr. was still widely acclaimed when it came out Also, having seen success with the then Universal-owned Oswald the Lucky Rabbit the year before, Walt Disney and co-director/animator Ub Iwerks wanted a character that they not only created, but controlled and directly profited from.
Now, neither Walt no Ub seemingly ever said they were inspired by Keaton’s film, as far as can be determined. Yet, with Steamboat Willie similar in name and bare bones plot to Steamboat Bill, Jr. it would hard to believe Walt and Iwerks weren’t very aware of Keaton’s silent comedy and saw the resemblance as a chance to jump on the coattails of one of the biggest stars of the time.
After all, 1928 or 2024, copyright or not copyright, as the great Oscar Wilde once quipped: “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.”
Jill Goldsmith contributed to this report
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