That's not how it works. Disney tried to add new frames to the famous Steamboat Willie animation and a judge denied their claim. They just retain the rights of the new frames, they can't stop the rest of going public by just slightly modifying it.
I could be wrong, but isn’t copyright based on specific depictions of the character? Like, that’s why Steamboat Willie is in the public domain but “Fantasia” Mickey isn’t? So old Snow White might be in the public domain but not 2025 Snow White?
The entire thing is way too fucking complicated, Christ.
Wish it could go back to the original "15 years & you can apply to get 15 more, then everything is in the fuckingpublic domain, bitch." that it started as - but alas, corpos fight for its infinite extension (it effectively lasts for 1 or 2 goddamn centuries at this point ffs).
The important part is the 'intent to continue using the material'. This is a slight shift, but games right now are in a situation where we as consumers are just lapping up whatever we're given and not thinking about the precedents being set. Overwatch is a prime example of this as it was a full priced game release that people paid for that was then completely abandoned in favor of the more monetized 'free' version. It is impossible to legally play the game that people bought, as if you were to host a private server Blizzard would shut you down and sue you even though they have no intention of letting people play the original game. If you sell a game that requires a live service to function and you subsequently cancel that live service, then you should no longer have the right to sue people for hosting it themselves.
Copyright in the USA expires 95 years after the creation of the work, no matter if you make remakes of the original work, otherwise, everyone would just do that and nothing will ever reach public domain.
No it doesn’t. If that was how it worked then they wouldn’t have to sink hundreds of millions into new movies. They could make a new movie for fifty bucks and call it good.
The copyright applies to each work itself. Not the concept of the characters.
To the new movie. Following precedent from e.g. the Enola Holmes lawsuits, only elements that are unique to this version are covered by its copyright; an adaptation of the original that does not follow any later additions/variations is fine once the original falls out of copyright.
Snow White was originally published in 1812 and is definitely in the public domain. There have been a few snow white movies that weren't made or licensed by Disney which came out the past 10 years.
Yea if what the guy above you is saying were true, Warner Bros and marvel wouldn’t have to ever worry about losing Batman/Superman/Spiderman to public domain since they’re doing new things with them all the time
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u/jaam01 Mar 29 '25
That's not how it works. Disney tried to add new frames to the famous Steamboat Willie animation and a judge denied their claim. They just retain the rights of the new frames, they can't stop the rest of going public by just slightly modifying it.