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Paraguay Loves Mickey, the Cartoon Mouse. Disney Doesn't
- muhoweb 2y agoMirror: https://archive.is/TmaOu https://archive.is/TmaOu
- kragen 2y agoyou'd think an article nominally about 'intellectual property' would mention that mickey mouse is out of copyright now, at least in countries that apply the rule of the shorter term https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/mickey/ https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/mickey/
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- codetrotter 2y agoBut the Mickey Mouse that is out of copyright is specifically the one you see in Steamboat Willie from 1928 (and maybe some of their other old movies with Mickey, I don’t remember what other movies Disney made early on around 1928). Meanwhile the Mickey that is shown posing on top of a building in one of the photos looks like a more recent Mickey. (But I’m no Mickey expert.) And it is important to keep that in mind.
- aaronbrethorst 2y agoWhich is why Crooked Media can sell a t-shirt of two Steamboat Willies kissing without receiving a cease and desist but can't feature a pair of more modern looking Mickeys going at it: https://store.crooked.com/collections/pride-or-else/products/dreamboat-willy-t-shirt https://store.crooked.com/collections/pride-or-else/products...
- kevin_thibedeau 2y agoIt's still a trademark for perpetuity. Copyright expiration on specific films doesn't change that. This is why Disney started using the pie-eyed mickey more heavily in their marketing 10+ years ago to reinforce their trademark over that version of the character.
- ethbr1 2y agoIt's in trademark as long as Disney registers and renews the trademark in whatever country. And trademark doesn't protect against any and all use in the same way copyright does -- only uses that might create consumer confusion with the trademark owner's uses. Presumably, a company that has been selling grocery staples since 1935 with that logo isn't creating much confusion. Arguably, Paraguayan Mickey has a better claim that modern do-everything Disney Mickey is infringing on its long-established trademark...
- eru 2y ago> Presumably, a company that has been selling grocery staples since 1935 with that logo isn't creating much confusion. Yes, though their mascot might be? The article itself clearly states that the locals seem to associate the man-in-costume-mascot with going to Disneyland.
- labster 2y agoIt’s not Mickey’s fault that a foreign company created a theme park with their corporate mascot 20 years later. Just one of those weird coincidences hahaha.
- cfraenkel 2y agoUm, except that the article is about a trademark. Mickey (the Paraguayan company) isn't printing comics or producing cartoons, so how would copyright apply? (as your linked article from duke.edu explicitly explains)
- rubyfan 2y agoYeah it’s a trademark issue, not a copyright issue.
- mig39 2y agoThey're using Mickey Mouse (or their version of him), as a mascot. Doesn't that mean it's about a trademark? The business in question literally has a mouse, named Mickey, that looks a lot like the trademark of Disney, on their packaging, their buildings, and their advertisements. They are literally using Disney's trademark.
- eru 2y agoOh, yes? That's exactly what the comment you are replying to is talking about: The article is about trademark, not copyright.
- kragen 2y agoit's possible for a single thing to be subject to both trademark and copyright law, even in the usa; often the owners of the copyright and the trademark are different. this is how graphic designers get paid for designing corporate logos on spec, for example. see for example https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-protect.html https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-protect.html > How do I copyright a name, title, slogan, or logo? > Copyright does not protect names, titles, slogans, or short phrases. In some cases, these things may be protected as trademarks. Contact the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, TrademarkAssistanceCenter@uspto.gov or see Circular 33, for further information. However, copyright protection may be available for logo artwork that contains sufficient authorship. In some circumstances, an artistic logo may also be protected as a trademark. see also https://www.quisenberrylaw.com/ip-discovery-blog/who-owns-the-copyright-in-your-logo https://www.quisenberrylaw.com/ip-discovery-blog/who-owns-th... it seems clear that the paraguayan mickey company is the legitimate owner of the paraguayan trademark
- pigeons 2y agoThe copyright has expired for the Steamboat Willie short film and a few other things like certain comic strips featuring Mickey Mouse. To me that seems different than "mickey mouse is out of copyright now".
- kragen 2y agofortunately for you, jennifer jenkins, the director of the center for the study of the public domain at duke university's law school, has written a 6000-word explanation of the precise extent to which mickey mouse is or is not out of copyright now, including 21 footnotes which add further detail, which i linked in my comment above and will link again here now for your benefit https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/mickey/ https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/mickey/
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- TheRealPomax 2y agoIt's not. A character by that name from a 1928 animation is out of copyright. It is an entirely open question at what point a derivative work becomes a new stand-alone work and what that actually means for the copyright of the character by the same name with a different character design currently used by Disney as one of their brand characters.
- rubyfan 2y agoSounds like Disney failed to protect its mark in Paraguay over many decades.
- aij 2y agoMickey was selling foods under that trademark in Paraguay since 1835. When did Disney start competing in that market segment with their Mickey Mouse brand?
- kragen 2y agowell, 01935, not 01835. not a lot of paraguayan businesses from 01835 survive thanks to the war of the triple alliance
- aij 2y agoAck, yes, I meant 1935. I'm on mobile and typoed that in a way the spell checker couldn't catch... Even now in the US I have yet to see Disney selling rice under the Mickey Mouse brand in a way that could be at all confused with the Mickey rice in Paraguay that I grew up with.
- klyrs 2y agoNeither 8 nor 9 are valid octal digits, please stop that
- darthoctopus 2y agoThis is valid (if somewhat obscure) notation for decimal dates in particular, see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Now_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Now_Foundation
- dpassens 2y agoIt's a stupid notation: > the foundation uses 5-digit dates to address the Year 10,000 problem That just sets you up for the year 100,000 problem. The objectively better idea is to just parse years as regular integers, something that I'm confident people will figure out in the remaining 8 millennia until the problem actually hits.
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- miki123211 2y agoSee Also, Hungry Jack's[1]. They're an Australian fast-food chain, named so because Burger King was already a trademark owned by some small Australian store, and couldn't be used by the company that the rest of the world knows as Burger King. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_Jack%27s#:~:text=Hungry%20Jack's%20Pty%20Ltd.%20is,company%20owned%20by%20Jack%20Cowin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_Jack%27s#:~:text=Hungry....
- jkestner 2y agoU-Haul Australia is not associated with the American company at all. They just were able to register the trademark first, even using the original’s brand assets.
- jaza 2y agoAlso Taco Bell, which was absent here in Australia for many years, due to a long-running legal battle[1] with local chain Taco Bill. The first Taco Bell only opened in inner Sydney about 3 years ago (after decades of failed attempts). [1] https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/taco-bell-and-taco-bill-square-off-in-mexican-standoff-20191104-p53793.html https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/taco-bell-and-taco...
- jccalhoun 2y agoGrowing up in Indiana we had Waffle House which was different than the more famous chain. The chain called themselves Waffle and Steak in Indiana. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffle_House#Waffle_and_Steak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffle_House#Waffle_and_Steak
- sombragris 2y agoParaguayan lawyer here. Paraguayan trademark law states that every trademark title is valid for a 10-year term, and then it has to be renewed, with a 6-month grace period for renewal. Otherwise the trademark expires and it has to be registered using the whole process (which can be long). Apparently, Disney failed to register its trademark for a long time while [Paraguayan] Mickey dutifully did so, and also being careful not to overreach its trademark categories, things that helped it.
- _3u10 2y agoI've always wondered how all this mickey branded stuff exists since I got here, especially with major brands. Do you have any insight into why so many signs are in English? I can understand maybe foreign brands, but local mom and pop stores have giant signs like "50% Off. #partytime" especially businesses where no one speaks english.
- sombragris 2y ago> Do you have any insight into why so many signs are in English? I can understand maybe foreign brands, but local mom and pop stores have giant signs like "50% Off. #partytime" especially businesses where no one speaks english. That "casual English" is somewhat part of the language of the new generation. They're more like catchwords, because people don't really speak the language. People, especially young urban folks, use it to appear "cool".
- euroderf 2y agoSame phenom in Finland. But then it gets kinda weird when recruitment ads have job titles in English and then the body text in Finnish.
- pvaldes 2y agoPeople spent more time reading your job offer if is explained in their own language. Less friction, more eyeball time, that is what you want if you are a recruiter.
- diogenescynic 2y ago[flagged]
- oez 2y agoPeru?
- jaza 2y agoClearly not much effort went into the parent comment!
- diogenescynic 2y agoIt's called aphasia, my brain just sometimes mixes up words as I'm typing and I don't catch it when I re-read my comments. My brain just fills in the gaps.
- eru 2y agoJournalism is at least as much about providing entertainment as about 'problems'. And as far as entertainment goes, producing this article was a lot less effort than eg staging the Olympics. Btw, generically talking about IP misses important distinctions here: this is an article about trademarks, not about copyright. To give another example Brooks Brothers is a company founded in 1818, and I presume they still have their trademark. The trademark is not there to protect some creative achievement anyone had in 1818, but to help consumers not confuse the real Brooks Brothers with other people who make apparel. (Whether you buy that justification or not is a different question. I'm just pointing out that trademark and copyright are two different beasts. Another distinction: if you sit in your shed isolated from the outside world, and you produce a product to sell, generally whatever comes out of that process can't violate copyright---even if you produce exactly the same thing as an existing product)---but it can violate trademarks and patents. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean-room_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean-room_design In much of the modern world copyright is granted automatically, but trademarks have to be registered and defended.) I am very skeptical of the very idea patents, and somewhat skeptical of copyright, especially long terms. But trademarks are an entirely separate category, with entirely different trade-offs on a societal level. There are things to be skeptical about but indefinitely renewable terms ain't one of them.
- eru 2y agoClassic New York Times: > During a recent national holiday, the man inside the Mickey mascot costume was warming up in an air-conditioned metal container inside the company’s factory that serves as his office. > Ms. Blasco asked The New York Times to withhold Mickey’s identity from the Paraguayan public to preserve some of the “magic” behind the mascot. Seems all reasonable, until you remember the flimsy justifications for their doxxing of Scott Alexander of Slate Star Codex fame. See eg https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/22/nyt-is-threatening-my-safety-by-revealing-my-real-name-so-i-am-deleting-the-blog/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/22/nyt-is-threatening-my-...
- tangus 2y agoBut they didn't doxx him. Blasco is the owner, not the man in the costume.
- eru 2y agoSorry, I wasn't clear. I was complaining about the hypocrisy and double standards. It's all well and good that they didn't doxx the guy in the costume. I'm just saying that they also should have respected Scott Alexander's wishes, which were arguably even more justified.
- amarant 2y agoHeh, when I lived in Brasil "paraguaio" (Paraguayan) was slang for fake. Makes the term Paraguayan Mickey (or "Mickey paraguaio" as the Brasilians would call it) more interesting.
- tkgally 2y agoThe company's website: https://mickey.com.py/ https://mickey.com.py/
- pseingatl 2y agoPanamanian Patricio Jansson won a case against Piper Aircraft and levied on Piper's IP in Panama. Lots of mischief ensued.
- FabHK 2y agoIn related news: The people of Dubai don't love the Flintstones, but the people of Abu Dhabi do.
- selimthegrim 2y agoDo they love Nermal?
- whyenot 2y agoWhen I liked in Panama, they had Sidney's which were basically a direct copy of the Disney store fill with knockoff merchandise.
- CRConrad 2y agoHere's a video about a favourite from my youth, kind of a Nordic parallel (though this one is about a duck, not a mouse) -- "How This Duck Outsmarted Disney's Lawyers": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5fNMBqCncg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5fNMBqCncg