Yes from what I understand the Estate claims the character is under copyright because 10 stories remained under copyright in the US (and nowhere else I believe).
But that isn’t how things work and they don’t seem too successful at arguing the point.
Their latest attempt was with the Enola Holmes movie that came out recently.
Even then they argued it in somewhat round about fashion. Basically claiming that since Springer’s novels and the film depict a Sherlock with emotions, that they’re using copyrighted material from still copyrighted stories. On basis of Holmes being slightly nicer there.
I don’t think they would have gotten anywhere but it looks like Netflix and Legendary probably just paid them to go away.
Otherwise there are ton of public domain Sherlock things out there, and Conan Doyle’s Estate doesn’t seem to really bother anymore. Probably because 8 of those 10 have since hit the public domain, and the rest are clear in two years.
Somebody somewhere can claim trademark rights to almost anything (see for example “Tesla Inc.”) but that has nothing to do with where copyright comes from or how it ends
Wow - filing that under TIL. Hadn’t heard it before - thanks! It’s very much the same age as the glorious The Butterfly Ball (with a very young Dio singing).
It seems they’ve gone off the idea even as far as Mickey Mouse is concerned. (Which makes sense in a way – Steamboat Willie entering the public domain will probably not cost Disney a whole lot of money, but perpetual lobbying for copyright extensions will. Also, loads of Disney stuff is based on stuff by others that eventually ended up in the public domain, and infinite copyright “on the installment plan” might at one point become an issue for Disney at the other end if it becomes expensive to appropriate other stuff.)
Things are likely to become interesting again in the far future when Star Wars will be about to enter the public domain …
Winnie the Pooh, Seven Pillars of Wisdom and The Sun Also Rises are already out on Standard Ebooks. No The Murder of Roger Ackroyd yet, although they have the earlier Poirot books.
They also have the benefit of never expiring trademarks. So come 2024 some one can produce works with the Steamboat Willie design for Mickey, but they can’t slap the words “Mickey Mouse” on it or advertise it that way.
Which will kinda hamper anyone trying to take a bite out of Disney’s mouse business.
That’s probably not such a huge problem in practice given that the mouse in question is so iconic you don’t need to call it “Mickey” explicitly in order to make people aware of the fact (to be fair, the mouse in Steamboat Willie looks quite different from the modern incarnation, but not so different that people won’t be able to make the connection). It’ll look cute on a baby onesie even without a “Mickey Mouse” legend, and you could definitely put “Steamboat Willie” on it instead which would also be appropriate. (Disney doesn’t get to use trademarks to effectively extend the copyright terms of stuff that would otherwise enter the public domain, because in that respect copyright law trumps trademark law.)
Yeah and that’s the thing it’s the combination of Steamboat Willie not being the iconic version of the mouse and the restrictions on trademark that make a serious Alt-Disney something they don’t have to worry about.
It detail yes.
In practice probably not. Disney’s trademarks are in active use, and they seem to have covered all your media and merch uses.
They do have trademarks on “Winnie The Pooh” and related ones.
Which would make it tricky for some one like Netflix to launch a public domain Pooh series next year.
Yes, any derivative works that you created would have to only use elements from the original works going out of copyright, and not those elements of later derivative works that are still covered by copyright. When you add in trademarks that never expire so long as they are still being used, everything gets complicated. And complicated, fiddly parts of the law are where powerful people engage in abuse of process. Their case doesn’t have to be good enough to win, just to not be laughed out of court upon filing to drown you in legal costs.
Well I think in terms of what this actually stops for in terms of big companies getting into abuse of process.
Is it kinda does away with the bit where Disney goes after any mouse that is wearing short pants or gloves. As they can’t argue something like is derivative of Mickey as of his first few appearances, if that bit is public domain.
That has far fewer implications for Winnie the Pooh as Disney’s distinctive bits of that and designs are still in copywrite for a long ass time. And the Milne estate wasn’t exactly out there trying to prevent people from featuring hungry bears and woods.
Either way the thing is definitely more in the remix, referencing and parody than any potential public domain explosion of Pooh stories, Robin Hood style.
