“Steamboat Willie” And Copyright Law
The L.A. Times has an interesting article on how the “Steamboat Willie” incarnation of Mickey Mouse may indeed be in the public domain due to imprecise copyright claims of its creators in the 1920’s. However, the article notes anyone that tries to take advantage of this may be facing a steep financial battle as there’s no doubt Disney Co. will do whatever it takes to keep the character, and any incarnation of it, theirs and theirs alone.
It’s a good read if you care at all about copyright and public domain law.
I have a passing interest as I have a spin on the Peter Pan story I plan to eventually pen into a screenplay.
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15 comments
Don’t mess with the Mouse.
I’m sure you must know this, Kevin, but the Peter Pan character was created by J. M. Barrie back in 1904 and is no longer protected by copyright.
That’s an irony lost on most: the Disney Corporation has built much of its fortune on public domain material (Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, etc.) and has zealously prevented its own material from entering the public domain so that it can be used by others for new creations.
The most egregious example is Pinocchio, the copyright for which expired in 1940, five years after the death of its creator. Disney rushed its derivative work into production. Were the same standard to be used for Disney’s own productions most of their greatest works would be in the public domain, as it should be and as the Founders clearly intended.
Great post Ron! Er, um, Kevin????
Dave: Are you sure the character is in the public domain? I noticed that the author’s estate authorized an official sequel to the original Peter Pan stories, which was published fairly recently.
I otherwise generally agree with your thrust; Disney is the best example of a company that rides the technicalities of copyright law right up to the edge. Their behavior in this regard has long been (to me and many others) emblematic of the serious problems with our intellectual property laws.
Dean,
Peter Pan is public domain. Even the article notes this when talking about Disney’s film version.
As for getting the author’s estate to authorize an official sequel, this was probably done more as a sign of respect than of legal necessity.
Anyone can write a sequel to Peter Pan. But it’s quite another thing to advertise it as the only authorized sequel by the J. M. Barrie estate.
Although, Peter Pan didn’t belong to his estate - he’d given it to Great Ormond Street Hospital before his death.
Er, where does the article say that Peter Pan is in the public domain? It looks to me like it only says that about the original Mickey Mouse cartoon.
Also, the sequel was specifically authorized by Great Ormond Street Hospital, who were gifted the rights to the original character and stories by JM Barrie–so you’re right, it’s not strictly his estate; the Peter Pan “estate” was gifted to them. They held a competition where novelists who wanted to do an official sequel would submit a sample chapter and an outline. The winning submission was just published a couple of years ago. Read about it here.
Hmm. A little more digging provides this interesting article on Peter Pan’s status as intellectual property. It appears that his exact status as a property is legally uncertain.
Quote on page 4:
So, at least Disney thinks Peter Pan is public domain and as they still use the character, it would appear they’re correct.
Yes, the copyright has expired. 70 years after the death of the author see here.
And as Dave’s article is more recent than Dean’s it appears the issue has been resolved.
Too bad about the hospital though. If anything happens with my story I’ll be sure to donate a portion of the profits to them.
Wait a second… reading Dean’s article more closely, and looking at the source of Dave’s article, it seems they’re both right.
Peter Pan entered public domain in the E.U. in 2007 and the copyright isn’t thought to expire in the U.S. until 2023. However, according to Dean’s article:
Things might be a little more foggy here in the States.
We’d need to look at the copyright law prior to the US Copyright Extension Act and see if indeed the U.S. copyright on Peter Pan expired before the act became law.
Okay, I tried doing some research on Wikipedia about the Copyright Term Extension Act and by brain hurts. Peter Pan would have been copyrighted under the 1909 Act. The later 1976 Act trumps the 1909 Act but only for works published after 1978.
But then it would appear the copyright for Peter Pan would have expired well before 1998. Only under the 1976 Act would it have expired in that year.
I don’t get it. Meh. Let lawyers figure it out.
Amazing. Am I the first to note that whatever the status of MM, the cartoon “Steamboat Willie” is itself regarded as a rip-off of Buster Keaton’s “Steamboat Bill” or did I miss something?
Kevin: Oh, I didn’t notice there was more than one page to the original article. %-) But it looks to me like we’re basically right that Peter’s legal status isn’t entirely clear. I think that’s not surprising; even with international conventions, different countries and regions will have at least slightly different laws. It’s also rendered tricky because a character may live beyond his original story. So, the original Peter Pan stories may now be public domain but the question is, is Peter himself public domain, just like Tom Sawyer and Paul Bunyan and etc.?
Disney has managed to go 90 degrees on a lot of these questions by making Mickey Mouse one of their registered trademarks; copyright is temporary, but trademarks are forever (at least in most jurisdictions). This allows Disney to sue anyone attempting to use Mickey Mouse without their express permission (which they are extremely stingy about, to the point where even people who want to put Mickey’s face into an encyclopedia article or a news story often get nasty letters from Disney’s legal staff).
I dislike the Disney corporation in a lot of ways; I think their rigorous use of intellectual property really stretches the limits as far as they go without breaking, and as such Disney is as much a hindrance to the creative community as they are a part of it. I also think their self-promotion is rather too shameless. But I could write on that a lot. I think what’s emblematic for me is how back in the ’80s (or possibly early ’90s, I don’t remember clearly) a small independent publisher decided to reprint some 1920s and 1930s Mickey Mouse comic books because the copyright had expired on them and they thought there would be a market, at least among cartoon history fans, to see these originals. No one expected them to make a lot of money, but it would have been cool to have them. Disney was very aggressive in shutting them down, and their argument was that the copyright was irrelevant, their trademark was being threatened by these comic books from this small-time black and white publishing house.
As I understand the situation with Peter Pan, he is basically not copyrighted, but derivative works that are copyrighted are still enforceable, and so Disney can defend their own image and story of their versions to the hilt but probably can’t stop someone else from making their own Peter Pan stories. And it looks like that children’s hospital can still enforce their copyright on the original stories in some jurisdiction but not others, and are trying to extend their profitability on this legacy they’ve inherited by putting an "official" imprimatur on new stories.
I’ll bet Disney doesn’t kick over a dime for them or lift a finger to help them at all. Because that’s just how they roll.
Teqjack: You’re very perceptive but you’re not the first to notice. The Wikipedia entry says that it was an intentional parody of the Keaton film. So "ripoff" wouldn’t be quite fair, but the resemblance was intentional.
In terms of "ripoff," however, you can make a very good case (and some animation historians have) that Mickey was a ripoff of Felix the Cat, who at the time Mickey was introduced was already an international superstar and one of the best-known "people" on the planet, his face gracing news magazines and promo materials everywhere. Very few people alive remember this, but Felix was once much, much bigger than Mickey, and he definitely preceded Mickey. I think if you look at any footage of the original Mickey, and any footage of Felix from the same era, it’s almost impossible not to notice that they look almost identical except for the shape of the ears and Mickey’s slightly longer snout. The animation style was all but identical. Disney just managed the transition to sound better than Sullivan and Messmer–possibly in part because the latter two just weren’t as good with sound, but also possibly because of creative disputes they had.
Much has been written about the tendency of Disney to claim to have innovated and pioneered things they did not originally create. It goes back to the very earliest days of Disney Studios; a lot of people who care about these things believe that Walt Disney’s real talents had little to do with innovation and everything to do with self-promotion.
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