Some of your favourite fictional characters may be entering the public domain soon.
Copyright law in the United States dictates that works published after the 95th year of publication will no longer be affected by copyright.
This means that characters such as Superman, Wonder Woman, Mickey Mouse, Captain America, and Batman will be entering the public domain within the next 15 years.
Batman’s copyright is set to expire in 2035 but in a video uploaded to YouTube titled ‘What Happens When BATMAN Enters Public Domain’, Austin McConnell warns that filmmakers, comic writers, and anyone excited for the superhero to enter the public domain shouldn’t get their hopes up too much.
“Don’t forget that we’re only talking about the 1939 Detective Comics Batman” McConnell says, adding that many of Batman’s most famous characters and attributes were added much later after the original comic.
This also goes for Mickey Mouse, who’s copyright is set to expire in 2024. Only the original 1928 version, as seen in Steamboat Willie will be public domain. It’s also worth noting that, while the character may be in the public domain, Disney would still own the trademark to the Mickey Mouse name (same goes for DC and Batman). This means that if you make a movie about Mickey Mouse, you wouldn’t be able to use his name in the title.
Disney has lobbied to have the copyright term extended before, most notably in 1998, resulting in the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 being nicknamed the Mickey Mouse Protection Act. However, with the expiration date approaching, Disney has made no further attempts to extend the term further.
So will the use of previously-copyrighted characters be the future of cinema? Fanshawe film student Ryan Boyington, using the recent Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey film as an example, says “That movie sucked. If that’s the future of cinema then God help us all.”
Perhaps others will be more optimistic.
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