Hermit Kingdom vs. House of Mouse

North Korea might have a solid legal defense, anyway. In 1928, when Walt Disney introduced Mickey Mouse to the world in the cartoon short Steamboat Willie, producers were required to place a copyright claim in their films. The statement had to include the name of the copyright owner, the year, and the copyright symbol (the letter c inside a circle). Walt Disney included all of those elements in the opening frames of Steamboat Willie, but they didn?t appear next to each other. Legal scholars refer to this as a ?dispersed copyright,? and 1920s judges usually ruled them invalid. If a clever litigant had brought a claim at the time, Mickey Mouse would probably have entered the public domain. (The result would have crushed Walt Disney, who had already failed to secure the rights to his first cartoon hit, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.) Anyone could have pranced around in Mickey costumes or included the plucky mouse in their own movies. Modern judges are reluctant to make sweeping rulings based on such legal technicalities, however, especially when the results would cost one of the world?s largest corporations approximately $3 billion, so it?s probably unwise to challenge the Mickey Mouse copyright.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=7a1ed4200dbda996aeb178dd574f33ec

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