Yes - the most recent extension to copyright in the US expires on Dec 31, 2018. Unless Congress passes another extension, a whole selection of older works will pass into the public domain for the first time in decades on Jan 1, 2019.
In the past, Disney has been successful in lobbying Congress to extend it to prevent Steamboat Willie (the cartoon where Mickey Mouse first appeared) from entering the public domain, but it appears that they aren't actually making a push to do so this time - fingers crossed, this might actually happen.
What would this mean for usage of the Mickey Mouse character? Would people be free to use images from the older cartoons in new work? What about more recent updates to the character's design?
It's super interesting -- you end up in a situation where the bare character can be used, but subsequent developments of the character remain under copyright. This actually makes it extremely difficult to use characters since you wind up in a situation where the modern character as you understand it is inaccessible.
That was an interesting read. After reading both that and the other comments the only solid conclusion I can come to is that literary and visual intellectual property are handled differently, as evidenced by thid quote from the paper:
Judge Castillo stated that “[b]ecause the
Seventh Circuit’s incremental expression case law focuses on images rather
than literature, it is difficult to apply its precedent seamlessly.”
Since many depictions of Mickey are registered as various trademarks of the Disney conglomerate, things will basically shift from copyright to trademark law and they will be less able to say “you shall not pass” but they can definitely still make your life hell if you cross them.
Edit: I forgot to mention that I suspect that Disney started using their new pre-movie intro motion graphics that are heavily derived from steamboat willie as a bit of a hedge, since they get a reasonably strong defence from the complete inclusion of the opening sequence of steamboat willie against potentially confusing trademark infringement. It’s also a sneaky way to get a new copyright covered variant of their original material.
(IANAL) It depends also on the specifics of the law. For example, in Finland the copyright protects only the actual works, not any "idealized" representations such as the "character". That means that you are free to produce your own work with a character that resembles Mickey Mouse and own a copyright for that, as long as you can reasonably show that you haven't copied any Disney's copyrighted work verbatim. The only weapon Disney has against that is the trademark law so if you do it non-commercially (or commercially in a way that doesn't violate trademarks, whatever that means), you are free to do so. Not that I recommend doing so, because that's asking for trouble. But there's this Finnish artist, Kaj Stenvall, who does exactly that with his Donald Duck series: https://www.google.com/search?q=kaj+stenvall&client=firefox-...
> What would this mean for usage of the Mickey Mouse character? Would people be free to use images from the older cartoons in new work? What about more recent updates to the character's design?
Copyright protects the exact expression, but not the general concept. Mickey Mouse is already protected under trademark law, so while Steamboat Willie entering the public domain means you could redistribute that particular film, you wouldn't necessarily be able to do a lot else with the character without infringing on an established mark of Disney.
Is there some copyright related event coming up soon?