Public Domain
If humanity can survive itself and perhaps otherworldly threats, the next few decades of public domain law are set to be truly entertaining as a deluge of iconic characters will be effectively hitting the open market.
Essentially, when something entertains the public domain, it means the copyright protecting its intellectual property has expired, which therefore allows anyone and everyone to use the IP without violating any rules.
Last year, for example, there was a bevy of Winnie the Pooh content, most notably a horror-slasher film, after the character entered the public domain, thus allowing the writers and filmmakers to use the character without having to worry about being sued by whoever previously “owned” the rights to the character.
This year, 2024, will also see another iconic American character enter the public domain (sort of), as Steamboat Willie, the original version of Mickey and Minnie Mouse, is now unrestricted by copyright law and is fair use for anyone to use. John Oliver has been making quite a big deal about it on Last Week Tonight, in fact.
The characters as they appear in the animated short films “Steamboat Willie” and “Plane Crazy” entered the U.S. public domain Monday, January 1, along with thousands of other works from 1928.
Legal experts at Duke University say the Walt Disney Company still retains the copyrights to later iterations of the iconic mice for the time being, as well as the trademarks, but people “are free to copy, share and build on” the 1928 depictions of the pair. [via CBS News]
As a result of Steamboat Willie now being (creatively) up for grabs, a trove of horror-focused movies and games have already been announced, having obviously been in the works before the character’s official public domain status, which began on January 1, 2024.
By the time the business world reopened on January 2, two horror movies — Mickey’s Mouse Trap and Steamboat Willie — have been announced, as has a video game titled Infestation 88.
First look at another ‘STEAMBOAT WILLIE’ horror movie, which begins filming in Spring.
The film will follow a sadistic mouse who torments a group of unsuspecting ferry passengers. pic.twitter.com/WmTcYH6Ttu
— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) January 2, 2024
While Steamboat Willie is the clear headliner, other notable works now in the public domain, via CBS News, now include J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan play, Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot novel The Mystery of the Blue Train, the Charlie Chaplin silent film The Circus, the D.H Lawrence novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover, the Virginia Woolf novel Orlando: A Biography, and the music and lyrics to Cole Porter’s “Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love.”
Looking ahead, characters such as Batman and Superman will become public domain in 2034.