The headlines were triumphant. On January 1, 2024, Steamboat Willie — the 1928 animated short that introduced Mickey Mouse to the world — passed into the public domain. After 95 years of copyright protection, extended twice by acts of Congress that critics nicknamed the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act," the mouse was finally free.
Within 24 hours, a horror film called "Mickey's Mouse Trap" had been announced. Unauthorized Mickey merchandise appeared. Artists began incorporating the Steamboat Willie design into their work. The public domain had spoken.
Disney said nothing publicly. It didn't have to. Because copyright and trademark are different laws, and only one of them had expired.
Copyright Expires. Trademark Doesn't.
Copyright protection has a defined term — currently life of the author plus 70 years, or 95 years from publication for works made for hire. When the term ends, the work enters the public domain. Anyone can reproduce it, adapt it, build on it.
Trademark protection has no expiration date as long as the mark is in use and renewals are filed. Disney has maintained trademark registrations on Mickey Mouse — the character design, the name, the silhouette of the three circles — continuously since 1928. Those registrations cover apparel, toys, entertainment services, theme parks, and dozens of other categories. They are still active. They will remain active as long as Disney uses the mark and pays the filing fees.
The public domain version of Mickey — specifically the Steamboat Willie design, with the early angular face and pie-cut eyes — can be used in creative works. What it cannot do is imply Disney's sponsorship or endorsement. It cannot appear on merchandise in a way that would confuse consumers into thinking Disney made it. It cannot be used as a logo for a competing entertainment company. All of that is trademark territory, and trademark didn't expire on January 1, 2024.
The evolution problem: The 1928 Steamboat Willie mouse is in the public domain. The modern Mickey Mouse — the cheerful, white-gloved, red-shorts version developed through decades of redesign — is not. Disney has continuously updated Mickey's design, which restarts copyright protection for each new version. The public domain gave everyone access to one specific snapshot of a character that has been updated hundreds of times since.
Walt Disney Understood This Before the Lawyers Did
Walt Disney was not a trademark lawyer, but he operated with an intuitive understanding of brand protection that predated the legal sophistication his company would eventually develop. From the earliest years of the studio, Disney licensed Mickey Mouse aggressively — on merchandise, in appearances, in tie-ins that were unusual for an animation studio of that era. By 1932, Mickey Mouse Club memberships were in the millions. Mickey's face was on watches, dolls, underwear, breakfast cereal.
This wasn't just commerce. It was trademark maintenance. Every licensed product bearing Mickey's image was evidence of the mark's use in commerce, strengthening the registration and establishing consumer recognition. Walt Disney was building a trademark portfolio while building a film library, and the two projects reinforced each other.
The 1955 opening of Disneyland extended the trademark strategy into physical space. The parks are, among other things, trademark maintenance mechanisms: Disney characters in costume, Disney logos on everything, Disney's brand identity made tangible in a way that is very difficult to replicate and impossible to mistake for a competitor.
The Lesson That Every Brand Ignores
The Disney-Mickey story illustrates something that gets overlooked in discussions of intellectual property: copyright and trademark protect different things, and a smart brand owner stacks both.
Copyright protects the specific creative expression — the drawing, the film, the character design as fixed in a particular work. It expires. Trademark protects the brand identity — the association between the mark and the company in the minds of consumers. It doesn't expire unless you abandon it.
Disney will lose copyright protection on more of its catalog over the coming decades. Winnie the Pooh entered the public domain in 2022; the horror film "Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey" appeared within months. Disney's trademarks on its characters, however, are indefinitely renewable, indefinitely enforceable, and indefinitely separable from the copyright status of any individual work.
The mouse has been in the public domain for less than two years. Disney has been preparing for this moment for decades. The preparation was in the trademark filings, not the copyright extensions. The copyright extensions just bought time.