Mickey Mouse to enter the public domain in 2024. As of January 1, 2024, Mickey Mouse, probably Disney’s most iconic character, will enter the public domain due to copyright expiration after 95 years.
The freedom to use the image of the famous mouse created by the giant American animation company will have some limits – one of them is that the version of Mickey that is exempt from this restriction on use is only the first, which appeared on October 1, 1928. It was in a black and white animated film of about seven minutes, called “Steamboat Wille”, that Mickey made his debut, with a different appearance from the one we know today.
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The little mouse, who appeared whistling and maneuvering a steamboat, had a less stylized image, without the famous white gloves, and more like a mouse proper, with a more pointed snout. It is this version of the famous mouse that will be free of copyright, since under US intellectual property law it expires after 95 years.
Subsequent revisions of the law have already allowed two extensions of this term and, because they were associated with Disney’s lobbying of the U.S. Congress, the current version of the law has become known, among other names, as “The Mickey Mouse Protection Act”. When Mickey helmsman first appeared in the 1920s, the term guaranteed protection of 56 years; which was extended to 75 years (in 1976) and then to the current 95 years.
