The original Mickey Mouse’s copyright has ended: does this mean the Disney icon will start to lose his value?

An early incarnation of Mickey Mouse was as Steamboat Willie – a cartoon mouse with big ears, button-up pants and stick legs who piloted a steamboat whilst using magic to make music.

The character, created by Walt Disney in 1924, kicked off Disney’s success and was the blueprint for the popular icon we know today. This year, though, Steamboat Willie’s copyright expires, making him available free for public consumption and commercial use.

Copyright law stipulates that a work of authorship becomes a part of “public domain” if it is no longer under copyright protection – which can only be held for a maximum of 95 years in the US.

Mickey as Steamboat Willie first featured in a short black-and-white film in 1928 and it appears, too, that the film is now a free-for-all. January 1, 2024 saw the character’s copyright expiring and no longer ‘owned’ by Disney. Instead, it is now free for anyone to use anywhere around the world.

This includes copying the character and printing its likeness on merchandise (eg: t-shirts, caps, coffee mugs) and further more, means you can sell such items and make a buck from good ol’ Willie. Take the Mickey out of him if you so wish.

An early version of Minnie Mouse is also available for public and commercial use since Minnie was created and copyrighted at the same time as Mickey.

The predicament this causes Disney, beyond the fact that the company loses making profit from these earlier incarnations of Mickey and Minnie Mouse, is that the characters might also have their likeness tarnished, possibly decreasing their value in the pop cultural vernacular.

Several years ago, Winnie the Pooh had its copyright expire – which lead to one underground film director creating a movie in which Winnie goes bear-shit crazy, turning into a serial killer.

Such bastardisation of characters once considered cute and harmless – and certainly profitable – could well chip away at their ‘positive’ representation, potentially affecting box office and business in which those classic characters feature.

Whether Mickey Mouse is turned into a psycho killer and gets bums on seats at the cinemas, or not, who knows what the future will hold for him and other popular animated characters. Could altering Mickey to suit a modern passion for meme-laden parody lead to Disney fighting for longer copyright time (they fought for it in 2003 and won, which was the extension to 2023 that just expired). What happens as each of our other beloved fictional icons have their copyright expire, be it Felix the Cat, the Pink Panther or Barbie? My guess is we’ll be seeing a lot more ‘translations’ of these icons, possibly leading to even broader audiences. So it could be a good thing for the original copyright owners in the end.

For now, though, forget all that copyright hoopla and just enjoy free access to these awesome works of art while you can.

Antonino Tati

www.thepopshop.shop