You haven’t read it wrong: the original Mickey Mouse, that USED to be from Disney is, as of today, part of the public Domain.

Disney tried their hardest and used as many politics and law manipulation as they could, but after 95 years, this character can be used by anyone, for anything. Now this doesn’t mean you can use ANY Mickey Mouse: if you try using the recent iterations of the famous Mouse, you’ll be nuked in court by their lawyers.

Hearing this, you may be wondering how long it’ll take people to use him in all sorts of games and movies? 10 hours.

It took indie dev team “Nightmare Forge Games” less than 10 hours to release the above trailer and create a steam page of their horror game featuring our beloved mouse overlord as a terrifying, blood-thirsty monster that the main character has to kill(personally, love the concept). Infestation 88 is a co-op horror in which you’re an exterminator going after the biggest baddest mouse of all.

Public Domain

Public domain refers to the status of intellectual property, such as creative works or inventions, where the exclusive rights granted to the creator or owner have expired, waived, or are not applicable. When a work enters the public domain, it means that anyone can use, reproduce, distribute, and modify it without seeking permission or paying royalties. This allows for the free and unrestricted access to knowledge, culture, and creativity, fostering innovation and the exchange of ideas without legal restrictions.

The criteria for a work to enter the public domain vary depending on the type of intellectual property and the applicable laws. Generally, copyright protection has a limited duration, and once it expires, the work becomes part of the public domain. Additionally, some creators may intentionally dedicate their works to the public domain by using tools like Creative Commons Zero (CC0) licenses, which relinquish their copyright and allow others to use the work freely. Public domain materials play a crucial role in education, research, and the arts, as they provide a shared cultural heritage that can be utilized and built upon by future generations.

In a interview to CNN:

“More modern versions of Mickey will remain unaffected by the expiration of the Steamboat Willie copyright, and Mickey will continue to play a leading role as a global ambassador for the Walt Disney Company in our storytelling, theme park attractions, and merchandise. Whatever you do, to be protected against copyright infringement claims … you really have to be making new stuff and be sure you are basing it on Steamboat Willie,”

– Disney spokesperson

Which is to be expected from a greedy company who was responsible for extending copyrights on famous characters for an extra 20 years so they can milk those extra hard.

Obviously though these laws only apply to the U.S. based companies. Other countries have less stupid copyright laws, such as Brazil who only protects copyright of characters for up to 70 years after the creator’s death, not 75 plus however much money a company throws at politicians.

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