Patent ends 2024 for Steamboat *bleep* (Mickey Mouse)

[calendria]

 
 

(wonder why Wi**y is bleeped above?  Steamboat Wi**y is the characters' name!)

Long time patent (95) years ended Jan 1, 2024

"Almost a century after his big-screen debut, Mickey Mouse enters the public domain on January 1, 2024  opening the floodgates to potential remakes, spin-offs, adaptations " …

Next January, George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue will fall into the public domain. It will be followed by The Great Gatsby in January 2021 and Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises in January 2022.

On January 1, 2024, we'll see the expiration of the copyright for Steamboat Willie—and with it Disney's claim to the film's star, Mickey Mouse. The copyrights to Superman, Batman, Disney's Snow White, and early Looney Tunes characters will all fall into the public domain between 2031 and 2035.

The expiration of copyrights for characters like Mickey Mouse and Batman will raise tricky new legal questions. After 2024, Disney won't have any copyright protection for Mickey's original incarnation. But Disney will still own copyrights for later incarnations of the character—and it will also own Mickey-related trademarks.

James Grimmelmann, a copyright scholar at Cornell Law School, tells Ars that this is an uncharted area of law because licensing practices for modern characters are "so much more intensive and so much more comprehensive now" than in the 1920s and 1930s. "We never had megacharacters in the same way" prior to the 1920s, he says.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/01/a-whole-years-worth-of-works-just-fell-into-the-public-domain/

[linderlizzie]

W-i-l-l-y is another word for a man's important appendage and is therefore censored.  The censorship on this site is rather comical.

[calendria]

W-i-l-l-y is another word for a man's important appendage and is therefore censored.  The censorship on this site is rather comical.

Oh, like they would bleep  "luggage" ?

[fluffyubnny937]

I think it's important to remember that only the Steamboat Willie version of the Mouse is public domain, the current modern version that the big D uses is still protected and if you violate that they will make you look like Donald Duck after...because they'll sue your pants off.

[oldbuddy]

I think it's important to remember that only the Steamboat Willie version of the Mouse is public domain, the current modern version that the big D uses is still protected and if you violate that they will make you look like Donald Duck after...because they'll sue your pants off.

That would be terrible since I don't have any feathers to cover my Willie.

[linderlizzie]

I think it's important to remember that only the Steamboat Willie version of the Mouse is public domain, the current modern version that the big D uses is still protected and if you violate that they will make you look like Donald Duck after...because they'll sue your pants off.

This made me laugh, fluffyubnny937. Good one. 

[Tharol]

Like couple movies out ads there.

[calendria]

I think it's important to remember that only the Steamboat Willie version of the Mouse is public domain, the current modern version that the big D uses is still protected and if you violate that they will make you look like Donald Duck after...because they'll sue your pants off.

Hows come your "Willie" didn't get bleeped and mine did?

[Tharol]

*bleep*.