With white gloves - still under copyright
Disney hit squad helicopter already in the air.
Heard they deployed “Dead-Eye” 'Noccio on this one, with his legendary spotter “1000 Yard” Kriket.
Disney published a poster with Mickey with gloves in 1928, so Steamboat Willie Mickey with gloves is also in the public domain. https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE8AT04E/
Pretty sure they lost the steamboat willie clip, but they still own Mickey Mouse lol. Maybe that’s the joke and I woooshed
They lost the copyright of the Steamboat Willie characters as well. So the Steamboat willie version of the Mickey Mouse design is in the public domain. All the other Mickey Mouse designs are still under Disney’s copyright and they still own the Mickey Mouse trademark.
So yes you can use Steamboat Willie Mickey in anything you want and create derivative work.
They still have a trademark on Mickey mouse, so it’s not carte blanche. What extent the trade mark has isn’t perfectly clear, but it’s pretty powerful.
As long as you only use this Mickey in artistic work then it’s fine. If you start using it as branding and marketing like slapping that Mickey on a box of cereals then Disney will come after you because they can say your product causes consumer confusion and consumers associate your product with Disney. Which violates the trademark.
So if you want to make a Steamboat Willie 2 the promotional material needs to be very clear that it’s not a Disney production.
I’m not totally sure if you could make a sequel under trade mark law since the Mickey character is still trade marked for new works, maybe if it were free it would be ok. If you wanted to use clips from the original work in a music video or something then you should be able to do that.
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Trademark law only prohibits the use of a trademarked character if doing so “is likely to cause confusion, or to cause mistake, or to deceive” consumers about the source or sponsorship of the new product
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Mickey Mouse is still under copyright. You’re thinking of Steamboat Willie.
Parody has always been allowed though. I mean check out Wally Wood’s work…https://image.invaluable.com/housePhotos/bradfordsauction/33/727133/H22021-L294574096.jpg
You’ve completely misunderstood the whole thing.
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You could always use steam boat willie as long as it was obvious it wasn’t made by Disney
Wait, is there a channel of perfectly flat grey water, or is the ship sliding over asphalt?
… yes.
No further questions.
I like how the steam is getting sucked back into the second smoke stack.
Not to be pedantic, but that doesn’t resemble the Steamboat Willie version, which is the one in the public domain. That looks more like modern Mickey, which is still under copyright. The SW version has smaller ears and a longer nose.
Yeah, a lot of people are missing the point of this whole thing. Only the 1928 Steamboat Willie version of the character is in public domain. Most of these AI-generated examples contain features of later versions of Mickey (in particular the later, rounder head shape which is more like Fantasia-era Mickey), so these would likely still fall under copyright.
