I dunno. They'll still have the TM and copyrights on later works with the characters. And there's already plenty of unlicensed Mickey et. al. stuff out there

I dunno. They'll still have the TM and copyrights on later works with the characters. And there's already plenty of unlicensed Mickey et. al. stuff out there even with the copyright. I doubt this is really that threatening to their bottom line. (plus in the case of Disney, they probably have more IP then they can effectively market anyways, if Snow White goes public, they'll still have like two dozen similar princess characters they can push) On the other hand, picking a fight over the issue risks a public backlash that might go the other way and weaken existing copyright law in a way that really would hurt them. So I'd bet Snow White will enter the public domain.