[pyre]

  | I don't see any benefit to mankind if people were
  | suddenly free to print Mickey Mouse onto t-shirts
  | and sell them.

Mickey Mouse is a trademark of the Disney Corporation. Someone selling Mickey Mouse t-shirts would quickly run afoul of Disney's trademark lawyers. If Steamboat Willie fell into the public domain it would just mean that I could legally sell copies of it on DVD, or I could dub my voice over the video and post it to YouTube. Neither of these would materially harm Disney. Printing frames captured from Steamboat Willie on t-shirts would fall into an area where Disney could reasonably take someone to court for violating their trademark. Printing a generic image of Mickey Mouse on a t-shirt would be blatant violation of trademark, and practically an open-and-shut case.

I can't tell if you're just trolling or uninformed, but there are always a handful of posts in these discussions that don't understand the differences between patent, copyright and trademark.

[coderdude]

I just didn't know that Mickey Mouse was also trademarked. I do understand the differences between the three, however.

[danielweber]

I had a really long convoluted discussion with an IP lawyer, and he claimed that only specific instances of Mickey Mouse's likeness were protected by trademark.

I haven't really absorbed his argument, but he seemed pretty sure about it, and that we needed something else to (legitimately, in both our opinions) protect Disney's ability to control their brand even if copyright expired. He recommended giving Disney something very much like "right of publicity" for Mickey Mouse so they can still control the character, while allowing lots of old stuff to still enter the public domain.

[pyre]

To me, this sort of stuff seems like the IP law equivalent of bailing out banks (or GM) because they are "too big to fail."

Even if specific instances of Mickey Mouse's likeness are trademarked, I have a hard time believing that someone could be selling "Mickey Mouse" t-shirts on the street and not be in a risky legal grey zone.

[I'll also note that as an IP lawyer he probably has a rather conservative view of this. Thinking from Disney's perspective they don't want any trademark lawsuit to be in a legal grey zone. They want them all to be slam-dunks so that they can get their way.]