Mickey Mouse goes public domain, but not quite

[PeteProdge]

Cartoonist Lew Stringer reminded me that 2024 is the epoch where Disney's famous rodent is no longer in copyright BUT THAT COMES WITH HUGE CAVEATS YOU SHOULD NOT IGNORE. Lew is by far not the only person to have pointed out that it's not a complete free-for-all where we can take Mickey Mouse and make any IP based on him, but Lew has put it in layman's terms very well:

...Mickey Mouse is now in the public domain! Well, at least the ORIGINAL version is, as seen in Steamboat Willie back in 1928. The later, cutey versions are still exclusively owned by Disney, but the first version was always the best anyway!
No doubt everyone will be drawing him this year so I thought I'd have a go...

So, homebrewers, if you're feeling confident about thwarting a Disney lawyer, this could well be an opportunity to improve on the Gremlin-produced ZX Spectrum appearance of the high-pitched shorts-wearing murine.



Sky News goes into further detail here, reminding us that Winnie The Pooh has spent two years in a similar situation.

Anyway, do so at your own risk, I am not a lawyer. There could be legal penalties for taking the Mickey.

[Daveysloan]

Gives me an excuse to repost this thing I stuck on Facebook yesterday...



Was thinking I missed the boat by not making this into an actual game & releasing it yesterday.

[Oloturia]

Yeah, it's in the public domain but, as Lew wrote, it must be taken with extreme care.
I know some people that were hit by a grotesque Cease&Desist from Dark Horse for the use of the name "Conan" in a RPG rulebook. It's weird because the novels are in the public domain, but the "name" of our favourite barbarian can't be used because of Dark Horse's trademark valid in some countries (USA mainly). Now, a C&D isn't law and maybe a good lawyer could win, but the editors were small and they couldn't afford it. They had to change the title, but not the content of the book. They got some publicity from the incident, though.

Dark Horse stated also that they stopped Glénat from publishing comics about Conan, but it seems that it's not true.
https://bleedingcool.com/comics/glenat- ... in-europe/
https://www.glenat.com/bd/collections/c ... -cimmerien

[PeteProdge]

It's weird because the novels are in the public domain, but the "name" of our favourite barbarian can't be used because of Dark Horse's trademark valid in some countries (USA mainly). Now, a C&D isn't law and maybe a good lawyer could win, but the editors were small and they couldn't afford it.

Yeah, Disney has done a clever thing by getting the Steamboat Willie version of Mickey Mouse incorporated into a logo for its movies, so while copyright may not be a legal 'gotcha', trademark violation certainly is as long as that trademark is maintained...

Legal experts noted that later versions of Mickey Mouse created after Steamboat Willie will remain copyrighted, and Disney's use of the Steamboat Willie version as a logo in its movies since 2007 may allow them to claim protection for the 1928 version under trademark law, as active trademarks can be renewed in perpetuity (so long as the owner can prove using it).

[akeley]

Sorry, Mickey, but while these things can indeed be pretty bad in 2024 they are definitely not exactly as bad as they were 100 years ago

[4thRock]

Some low-effort conversions to Spectrum screens:

Monochrome with Bright variations

Steamboat_Willie_8x8_mono.png (7.71 KiB) Viewed 604 times

Colours to simulate gray tones

Steamboat_Willie_8x8.png (8.4 KiB) Viewed 602 times

Colours to simulate gray tones (8x1 Timex attributes)

Steamboat_Willie_8x1.png (9.33 KiB) Viewed 604 times

[Daveysloan]

Gives me an excuse to repost this thing I stuck on Facebook yesterday...



Was thinking I missed the boat by not making this into an actual game & releasing it yesterday.

I vowed not to make another MPAGD game for a while as we've churned out quite a few over the last couple of years but we did some tinkering about this afternoon & we might spend a few weeks cobbling something together.

Anybody want to provide a jaunty AY tune to go with it?

[Lethargeek]

so are we going to get "Mickey Mouse: Blood and Cheese" or not?