Mickey Mouse Public Domain: Disney Faces Lawsuit Over Rights

Essential Points

• Public Domain: Last year, Steamboat Willie entered the public domain, allowing for various parodies of Mickey Mouse.
• Legal Actions: Disney has initiated lawsuits against companies using Mickey Mouse for commercial purposes, asserting its trademark rights.
• Trademark Protection: Disney argues that while the film is public domain, its trademarks on Mickey Mouse remain enforceable.
• Consumer Complaints: The jewelry company Satéur has faced backlash for misleading customers into believing their products were official Disney merchandise.

Last year, Mickey Mouse’s appearance in Steamboat Willie became public domain, ushering in tons of horror parodies of Disney’s iconic mascot. The Walt Disney Company gave films such as the David Howard Thornton-starring Screamboat a pass, but apparently, it thinks there’s a limit on just how much other companies can get away with using Mickey’s iconic nautical depiction.

Disney has found itself in lawsuits after enforcing its intellectual property rights to its characters in Steamboat Willie against two companies seeking to utilize Mickey Mouse for marketing and retail purposes. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Morgan & Morgan, a U.S.-based personal injury law firm, attempted to use Steamboat Willie in a commercial, which Disney met with resistance. THR further reports that a jewelry company, Satéur, attempted to pass off merch with Steamboat Willie as official—which is where the legality gets all murky in Disney’s eyes.

Disney stands firm that despite the short being public domain, that doesn’t mean competitors can infringe on trademarks that protect its brands, which it maintains include various representations of Mickey Mouse, as the character has been iterated on for almost a century since Steamboat Willie‘s release. The lawsuit states that Disney has a history of “aggressive enforcement of intellectual property rights,” exemplified in the company’s “refusal to disclaim an intent to engage in enforcement against” Morgan & Morgan and Satéur.

Kelly Klaus, a lawyer for the complaint, was quoted in the complaint as clarifying that these companies, Satéur in particular, “infringe Disney’s continuing rights over its trademarks that identify Disney as the source of goods and services and to profit off the goodwill that Disney has built with the public over decades,” and “As Disney has stated publicly, while copyright expired on the Steamboat Willie motion picture, Mickey Mouse will continue to play a leading role as a global ambassador for Disney.”

Morgan & Morgan used the Steamboat versions of Mickey and Minnie Mouse in an advert that sees Mickey crash a steamboat into Minnie’s car, prompting her to call the injury firm, and at the very least discloses that the video is not associated or endorsed by Disney. Its use along with horror movies using the character in parody is one thing, but it’s another when companies attempt to pass off the character as endorsing their goods and services. Satéur, on the other hand, seems to fall into the latter category, as the THR story reports that multiple complaints by consumers have been filed to the Better Business Bureau for the shoddy accessories they were misled into buying, thinking they were official Disney products.

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