Dateline>City of Angels

They say turnabout is fair play…

Having argued for years that their company has legally appropriated characters in the public domain for its cartoons (i.e., Bambi and Peter Pan), Disney officials may soon be in the uncomfortable position of fending off challenges to their own copyright on none other than The Mouse himself.

According to an extensive article in today’s L.A. Times Business Section, legal technicalities surrounding the earliest “Steamboat Willie” renditions of Mickey (pictured above) may have inadvertently left the trademark rodent in the public domain.

But first, a legal disclaimer of my own: Before anyone accuses this blog of copyright infringement, please note that low-res images reproduced for the purpose of non-commercial commentary on a work are commonly considered fair use under U.S. law. Moreover, for now at least, Steamboat Mickey remains the property of Disney and may not be reproduced from this site for any other purpose. (There. You are warned.)

Even so, if legal experts are correct, Dateline>City of Angels and other would-be copyright violators may have nothing to worry about.

“That ‘Steamboat Willie’ is in the public domain is easy. That’s a foregone conclusion,” says copyright scholar Peter Jaszi in the Times piece, which adds:

The issue has been chewed over by law students as class projects and debated by professors. It produced one little-noticed law review article: a 23-page essay in a 2003 University of Virginia legal journal that argued “there are no grounds in copyright law for protecting” the Mickey of those early films.

The essay apparently sent Disney suits into a tizzy, and their blustery reaction makes for comical reading in the full article.

Birthplace of the Controversy?

Meanwhile, while the lawyers and scholars duke it out, your humble blogger went in search of a “neighborhood angle” to the story — and found it in L.A.’s nearby Franklin Hills district.

Call it the House the Mouse Built. In fact, the home pictured at left could very well be the birthplace of the newly contentious cartoon character.

About 1925, as Uncle Walt was preparing to open his first studio along Hyperion Ave., he purchased two lots at the corner of Lyric and St. George, within walking distance of his new enterprise. The following year, he completed the construction of two $8,000 houses, one for him and wife Lillian, and the second for brother Roy. Although Mickey made his celebrated debut in 1928, film historians say the Disney brothers had been at work on the character as early as 1925, with Walt possibly tinkering on preliminary sketches in his garage studio.

Back then, he called his would-be star Mortimer, but when he shared his creation with Lillian, she suggested the name Mickey instead. Disney made the change and released two animated shorts starring the mouse in 1928, neither of which was picked up by distributors. Undeterred, Walt took another stab that year with “Steamboat Willie,” the first animated cartoon to synchronize sound and action, performing the voices of Mickey and Minnie himself. This time the magic clicked, propelling Mickey and his creator to fame and fortune.

Four years later, Walt and Lillian moved out of their Lyric Ave. home, presumably for a fancier private domain.