I have two questions, how can a company like Disney own fairytales that they stole from folklore, doesn’t that fall under fair use or public domain?
Also, how does Disney still own copyright for their characters pass the 50 year copyright statue of limitation?
In: Other
There’s a running joke that Disney has more lawyers than animators. They are notorious for aggressively defending their Intellectual Property.
In the early 90’s Disney started to lobby Congress heavily for copyright reform. The earliest Mickey Mouse Cartoon ‘Steamboat Willie’ was released in 1928 as a result was in danger of become public domain by the end of the decade.
This would mean that Disney would no longer have airtight copyright protection over it’s famous mascot.
The resulting changes to copyright law extended Disney’s (and several other companies) copyrights by 20 years, and it’s expected that Disney will continue to lobby to extend their copyright protection moving forward.
Resulting copyright reform was nicknamed the “Mickey Mouse Protection Act” by critics as it was clearly passed to appease Disney and other mega media companies without little thought to the public good.
Copyright legislation will be in the news soon as the copyright extensions will soon expire and Characters like Batman, Superman, Mickey Mouse, and others are at risk of becoming Public Domain.
Copyright however refers to specific incarnations. The current appearance of Mickey Mouse will still be protected, while his appearance in Steamboat Willie will become public domain.
As for fairytales, Disney can’t copyright a concept like Robin Hood but they can copyright their own version of it. So the anthropomorphic characters in Disney’s Robinhood are what are copyrighted, not the story itself.
Similarly the recent trend of live action remakes of Disney movies is actually a deliberate plan to extend Disney’s copyright on these concepts for a further 50 years.
Disney doesn’t own the copyright to the fairy tale characters themselves; they own the copyrights to their versions of the characters. I can write my own Cinderella story today, for example, but I couldn’t use the image or specific characteristics of Disney’s Cinderella or the other characters, I couldn’t use any of their songs, and I probably couldn’t use plot elements that they introduced which weren’t in the original (like, for example, the adorable talking mice).
All they own is their *interpretation.* Don’t get me wrong, Disney is famous for aggressively defending their copyrights and I wouldn’t be surprised if they challenged someone using Cinderella (or whatever story), based on a couple of similarities that they can base a case on, simply because they have a lot of money and resources to fight with. But in theory, they don’t own the rights to many of the original stories, whose characters would be public domain so long as you can prove that they bear no extra similarities to the Disney versions.
Disney doesn’t own the copyrights to old fairytales, only to their specific version of them. Walt Disney suffered an early career loss when he didn’t correctly interpret the legal language covering ownership of Oswald the Rabbit. As a result, he became a ferocious intellectual property exploiter. The Disney Company took up the mindset from its founder, and has applied significant pressure to the US Congress, California Congressman Sonny Bono (yes, the singer) in particular. There are few people with as strong a motivation to campaign against Disney in Congress. As a result, US copyright has become a laughingstock. A patent on a genuinely useful invention lasts 17 years and yet the drawing of a mouse lasts the lifetime of the artist + 75 more years. Not exactly fair.
Here’s an [explanation ](https://www.theiplawblog.com/2016/02/articles/copyright-law/disneys-influence-on-united-states-copyright-law/) of how they managed to pull it off
I’m not sure for most of that, but I do know that the reason Disney continues to remake old movies is so that their copyright for it renews
The folklore and fairytales that Disney depicts in their movies does fall under public domain. There are other renditions of those stories in books, cartoons and live action movies. However the elements of the stories which Disney came up with is copyright protected. So other people can make cartoons depicting Cindarella but they can not use the same drawings or animations that Disney used but have to make their own.
The copyright term in the US is not 50 years. That was the old legislation of 1976. However the current legislation of 1998 extends the term to 70 years. However those term lengths is only for work by a single author and starts at the death of the author. Most of Disneys work was done by multiple authors, all the writers and animators, so copyright lasts until 95 years after publication. So for example Mickey Mouse was first published in 1928 will not become public domain until 2024. That is unless there is a new legislation before then which extends the copyright term even further.
Latest Answers