The copyright on Mickey Mouse expires today, meaning The Walt Disney Company no longer has the exclusive rights to the character. Does this mean you can put Mickey in your own cartoon? Not exactly.
Under current law, works released between 1924 and 1978 are copyrighted for 95 years. As a result, the thousands of works copyrighted in 1928 enter the public domain today, meaning anyone can use or reprint them without permission. That includes books like D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and films like Charlie Chaplin’s The Circus. But the most high-profile addition is Steamboat Willie, the animated short that marked the debuts of both Mickey and his longtime paramour, Minnie.
The cartoon depicted Mickey Mouse working aboard a steamboat, making music, and vexing the boat’s captain, a large cat named Pete. The slapstick humor, anthropomorphized animals, and objects of later Disney works are present, although Mickey is much more mischievous—the antagonistic dynamic with a giant cat is more reminiscent of Tom & Jerry cartoons than the Mickey Mouse familiar to modern audiences.
The seven-minute film was revolutionary: It was the first cartoon to feature synchronized sound—rather than just a silent film with background music—and audiences loved it. Mickey Mouse spawned a franchise that over the following century would earn more than $80 billion and make Disney one of the most powerful media companies on the planet.
Losing out on its rodential cash cow would be a huge blow, and Disney jealously guarded its creation. When Steamboat Willie premiered in November 1928, U.S. law dictated that it would enter the public domain no later than 1984. But two different laws, one passed in 1976 and another in 1998, extended the maximum copyright term, each by twenty years. Each law passed after strenuous lobbying by Disney: The latter statute, the Copyright Term Extension Act, has been derisively referred to as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act.
Today’s expiration implies that Disney was either unable to secure another extension or unwilling to try. In recent years, Republican lawmakers have signaled their unwillingness to extend copyright law any further on Disney’s behalf. Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.) even introduced the Copyright Clause Restoration Act of 2022, which would cap copyright terms at a maximum of 56 years—notably, the same term in effect when Walt Disney first released Steamboat Willie.
But this doesn’t mean that Mickey is completely free. The copyright that expires today only applies to Mickey Mouse as he first appeared: rat-like and mischievous, with pupil-less eyes and no gloves. All other interpretations, introduced later—including the magnanimous Mickey who greets visitors to Disney theme parks dressed in a bow tie and tails, with white gloves and human-like eyes and facial features—remain under lock and key.
Hellbound and Down 