“Mickey Mouse is, to me, a symbol of independence. He was a means to an end.”
— Walt Disney
“We will, of course, continue to protect our rights in the more modern versions of Mickey Mouse.”
— Statement from Walt Disney Co.
No corporation in America has a clearer or stronger reputation for protecting its intellectual property than the Walt Disney Company does. They will famously sue anyone, anywhere, at any time to shield a copyright or a trademark. They are also famous for lobbying Congress to extend protection over characters, films, shorts, and other property as the intellectual property protection over those things is close to expanding.
On multiple occasions in the 20th century, Congress passed laws extending copyright protection with Disney heavily lobbying in favor of the changes. Each time, those extensions permitted the House of Mouse to protect the very character that gave them their nickname — the mouse himself, Mickey.
Until this month, American law has protected the big-eared companion to Minnie in all of his forms and all of his iterations. But on the first of January, the earliest version of Mickey, and his two earliest cartoon appearances, entered the public domain.
When a work, particularly a popular one, passes into the public domain, a significant stream of income can be lost to the author, artist, composer, publisher, movie studio or publishing house that previously controlled it. As such, there is a constant legal fight between the owners of those copyrights and advocates for free distribution.
In 1998, Congress passed a law that came, pejoratively, to be known as the “Mickey Mouse Protection Act” (though officially known as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act). The law extended copyright protection for an extra 20 years for most works, providing that the work would remain under copyright protection for the life of the creator plus 70 years. For works created by a corporation, the extension was to 120 years or 95 years from the date of publication. Prior to the act, Mickey Mouse would have passed into the public domain in 2003. After the act, Mickey’s protection ended on Dec. 31, 2023, thus the popular name for the bill.
Shortly after the bill’s passage, a group of publishers, librarians, and free use advocates sued, seeking a federal court injunction to stop the bill from taking effect. The College Art Association, Luck’s Music Library, and the American Association of Law Libraries were among the plaintiffs. Arguing in favor of the bill were ASCAP, BMI, the Motion Picture Association and the Recording Industry Association. On Jan. 15, 2003, the Supreme Court upheld the bill as Constitutional by a vote of 7-2.
There was lingering concern, however, that American works were still not well protected overseas. An international convention produced what came to be known as the Uruguay Round Agreements and those agreements were adopted by Congress. Unlike the Mickey Mouse Protection Act, the Uruguay Round Agreements actually took works that had lapsed into the public domain and returned them to copyright protection. As is often the case in international negotiations, in order to secure copyright protection for American works overseas, the U.S. had to agree to grant renewed copyright protection to some foreign works that had lapsed in the United States. Among these works were writings of British author J.R.R. Tolkien, films by British director Alfred Hitchcock and musical compositions by Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich.
All of Mickey’s later films, his television appearances and his trademark protections are still active. And you can bet that Disney’s lawyers will not stop taking action to protect their intellectual property. Things will really get interesting when Disney’s films start entering the public domain with the first being Snow White in 2032.
Among the other works that entered the public domain at the beginning of this month were Charlie Chaplin’s “The Circus,” A.A. Milne’s book, “The House at Pooh Corner,” Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando,” “Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle,” by Edgar Rice Burroughs, and the songs “I Wanna Be Loved By You” and “There’s a Rainbow ‘Round My Shoulder.” European protections run on different timelines and so what’s free for use in the U.S. is not necessarily open season in France or the U.K.
David Hejmanowski is judge of the Probate/Juvenile Division of the Delaware County Court of Common Pleas, where he has served as magistrate, court administrator, and now judge, since 2003. He has written a weekly column on law and history for The Gazette since 2005.
