The copyright to the original version of Mickey Mouse expired on January 1, 2024: Mickey Mouse made his first appearance in the black-and-white animated film “Steamboat Willie” by Walt Disney in 1928. The copyright to this character has now expired after 95 years under US law. Remakes, adaptations and other uses of this character are now possible without permission. Among other things, a trailer for a horror film featuring Mickey Mouse has already been released.
What is allowed – and what is not
However, this does not mean that the Mickey Mouse character is now copyright-free per se: copyright still exists for the more modern versions of Mickey Mouse. This means that if the first Mickey Mouse character is used, there must be no overlap with later, still protected versions of the well-known mouse. Disney has also already announced that it will defend these existing rights to the more recent Mickey Mouse versions.
In addition, the copyright to Mickey Mouse will initially only expire in the USA. In Germany and the EU, however, copyright lasts until 70 years after the death of the author. The last co-author of the film died in 1971, so protection would last until 2041. According to the Berne Convention, protection is to be based on the country of origin (i.e. the USA), but there is also a bilateral copyright agreement between Germany and the USA, which does not contain any such provisions and generally takes precedence over the Berne Convention. Legal scholars are divided on the extent to which this affects copyright protection.
Trademark right still exists
It should also be noted that the Disney Group also has trademark rights to Mickey Mouse and that these can be extended at will. For this purpose, the Disney Group has included a clip from “Steamboat Willie” in front of its animated films. If the Mickey Mouse figure is then used commercially by third parties and customers are misled as to whether it belongs to Disney, Disney could also take action against this via trademark law.