[jkn]

You're confusing copyright and trademark. If copyright was allowed to expire, people could freely share the earliest Disney movies, but they still couldn't infringe the Mickey Mouse trademark by printing t-shirts since the trademark doesn't expire.

[coderdude]

Yeah, you're right. I should have done a little reading first.

From Wikipedia: "It is sometimes erroneously stated that the Mickey Mouse character is only copyrighted."[1]

I could have avoided this one. :)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Mouse#Legal_issues