Disney copyright for Mickey Mouse ends on January 1, 2024, and legal battles lie ahead as Steamboat Willie character enters the public domain
- After January 1, anyone is free to copy, share, reuse and adapt the black-and-white 1928 animation Steamboat Willie and its early versions of Mickey and Minnie
- Disney has said it will ‘continue to protect our rights in the more modern versions of Mickey Mouse’, and a law expert predicts ‘legal skirmishes’ ahead
Almost a century after his big-screen debut, Mickey Mouse enters the public domain on January 1, opening the floodgates to potential remakes, spin-offs, adaptations … and legal battles with Disney.
The date has loomed large on the calendars of everyone from filmmakers, fans and intellectual property lawyers to Disney executives, who in the past helped lobby to change law to prolong US copyright terms.
“This is a deeply symbolic, highly anticipated moment,” said Jennifer Jenkins, director of the Centre for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School in the US state of North Carolina.
Anyone is now free to copy, share, reuse and adapt Steamboat Willie and Plane Crazy – another 1928 Disney animation – and the early versions of the characters that appear within them, including Mickey and Minnie.
A vital caveat is that later versions of the characters, like those in 1940 film Fantasia, are not in the public domain and cannot be copied without a visit from Disney’s lawyers.