What ‘Mickey Mouse’ copyright expiration means

On January 1, reports that the copyright to the earliest Mickey Mouse versions had lapsed and thereby the artwork had fallen into public domain dominated the news.

The news was exciting to Intellectual Property practitioners, particularly for it proves that the global IP system is alive and well as the twin objectives of the copyright system to incentivise creativity and grow the public domain are met.

This is also because the drawings became something of a poster for lengthy copyright terms which have been subject of legal contestation in the United States. Works for which copyright term has lapsed form part of the public domain.

In that case, they are free for anyone else unrelated to the rights holders therefore can be used to create new derivative works without seeking the authority of the former copyright holder.

The Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and the Berne Convention are two treaties that set the global standard on protection of copyright. The two Treaties have set the minimum term of protection at life of author (human) plus 50 years after death.

At the end of that period, the work falls into public domain as illustrated by the case under review. Kenya set the term of copyright as life of author and 50 years after the end of the year in which the author dies.

However, the treaties, by setting only the minimum term, allowed many countries to raise the term of copyright in most cases to 70 years and a few up to 90 years. Many of those nations with TRIPS plus provisions are rich industrialised nations with a lot of investment in Intellectual Property Rights.

The approach for most of those countries is to influence protection of Intellectual Property generally and extend the term of copyright through trade and other arrangements. This approach has raised tempers in many international fora whenever IP is discussed.

- Mi Sigei is the Executive Director, Kenya Copyright Board. [email protected]