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'It's something copyright scholars like myself have been concerned about,' she continues. Jennifer Jenkins and Sean Dudley Jennifer Jenkins, director of the Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain, made this conveniently mouse-shaped explanation of what you can and can't do with the Steamboat Willie version of Mickey Mouse as of Jan.

Disney and other corporations, she says, use trademarks to extend control over intellectual property.' As long as the mark remains distinctive in the supply of goods and services, the owner of the trademark gets to protect that trademark.' 'And of course, trademark law has no end,' adds Harvard Law School professor Ruth Okediji. 'Trademark law is entirely about protecting brands, logos and names - like Mickey Mouse as a logo, or the name Mickey Mouse,' McLeod says. And as it happens, Mickey Mouse is also trademarked. Copyright applies to creative characters, movies, books, plays, songs and more. New versions of Mickey Mouse remain under copyright. Nor the one on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, a kids' show that aired on the Disney Channel for a decade starting in 2006.

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Not the Mickey Mouse in the 1940 movie Fantasia.

That means people can creatively reuse only the Mickey Mouse from S teamboat Willie. 'What is going into the public domain is this particular appearance in this particular film,' he says. He remembers anxious talk, when he worked at the company in the 1990s, about the beloved icon eventually entering the public domain.īut that's not happening, says Kembrew McLeod, a communications professor and intellectual property scholar at the University of Iowa. 'You know, he's evolved so much and become more 3D and colorful,' observes Ryan Harmon, a former Disney Imagineer, of the character today.