“Mickey Mouse Will Be Public Domain Soon—Here’s What That Means: The Internet Stopped Another Copyright Extension without Firing a Shot”, 2019 (; backlinks):
As the ball dropped over Times Square last night, all copyrighted works published in 1923 fell into the public domain (with a few exceptions). Everyone now has the right to republish them or adapt them for use in new works. It’s the first time this has happened in 21 years.
In 1998, works published in 1922 or earlier were in the public domain, with 1923 works scheduled to expire at the beginning of 1999. But then Congress passed the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. It added 20 years to the terms of older works, keeping 1923 works locked up until 2019. Many people—including me—expected another fight over copyright extension in 2018. But it never happened. Congress left the existing law in place, and so those 1923 copyrights expired on schedule this morning.
…Next January, George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue will fall into the public domain. It will be followed by The Great Gatsby in January 2021 and Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises in January 2022. On January 1, 2024, we’ll see the expiration of the copyright for Steamboat Willie—and with it Disney’s claim to the film’s star, Mickey Mouse. The copyrights to Superman, Batman, Disney’s Snow White, and early Looney Tunes characters will all fall into the public domain 2031–42035.
…[but] Using public-domain characters could be a legal minefield: A company like Disney enjoys several layers of legal protection for a major character like Mickey Mouse. It owns the copyright to the original character. It owns the copyrights to subsequent versions of the character, which tend to be better known to modern audiences. And it also owns trademark rights…The most obvious example here is Mickey’s white gloves. He didn’t wear them in Steamboat Willie. So if you wanted to sell a Mickey toy with white gloves, you’d probably need to wait until 2025, when the copyright for the first Mickey short with white gloves, The Opry House, is scheduled to expire. The early Mickey Mouse cartoons were black and white, so if you wanted to make a Mickey Mouse toy with modern colors, you’d have to carefully research when those colors first appeared. Later changes to Mickey’s appearance have been more subtle. But they may still be legally important…This is a line that third parties are already walking for the Sherlock Holmes series, which was published 1887–40192797ya. Most of the books are in the public domain, but the last few volumes are still under copyright…The same legal issues will arise when other iconic characters—Batman, Superman, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Winnie the Pooh, and so forth—fall into the public domain over the next 20 years…Anyone will be able to make new Batman cartoons after 2035, but they’ll have to be careful to only use elements from Batman’s original incarnation.