Disney Is Losing Its Grip On Its Most Iconic Characters

One of the company's characters recently got put into a gruesome horror movie and the company was powerless to stop it.

One of Disney’s most cherished characters recently got put into a gruesome horror movie and the company was powerless to stop it. Now the company is worried that its most iconic character could be next.

You’re probably familiar with Winnie the Pooh, the plump bear who loves honey and adventures. Well, Winnie the Pooh was first introduced to the world in 1926 by the author A.A. Milne, who based the book on his son Christopher Robin and his stuffed animals.

The book was a hit and it included other well-known characters like Piglet and Eeyore.

A few years after writing the book, Milne licensed some of the rights for Winnie the Pooh to Stephen Slesinger, who took the character and made him even more popular.

He gave Pooh his famous red shirt and created a plethora of Winnie the Pooh merchandise, including toys, games, and clothing, which helped make the character a household name.

A few decades later, once Milne and Slesinger died, their families eventually sold the rights for Winnie the Pooh to the Walt Disney Company, which took Pooh and made him even more famous, turning him into a global phenomenon.

This Disney version of Winnie the Pooh is probably the version of the character that you grew up watching and are familiar with.

Now the thing about owning a character is that it’s not permanent thing. Characters are a type of intellectual property that is usually protected by copyright laws.

These laws are in place to encourage the creation of new works like books, paintings, movies, TV shows, and other forms of artistic expression.

Copyright laws protects the rights of the creator of a work, giving them the exclusive ability to reproduce, distribute, and display their work, as well as create derivative works based on the original.

However, this isn’t a right that lasts forever. The duration of copyright protection varies by country, but in general, copyright protection lasts for the life of the author plus a certain number of years after the author's death.  

In the U.S., the duration of copyright protection has gotten longer over time. It started at a maximum of 28 years, then it went up to 42 years, then 56 years, and on and on.  

The last big jump happened in 1998 (with the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998), when the duration of copyrights in the U.S. was extended to the life of the author plus 70 years.

For works published prior to 1978—like Winnie the Pooh— the duration was increased to 95 years after publication.

When a copyright expires, the work in question enters the “public domain,” where it can be freely used, copied and remixed without permission or payments to the original creator.

If you do the math, you’ll see that the copyright for the original Winnie the Pooh story published in 1926 would end in 2021 (1926 + 95). And that’s exactly what happened.

Starting in 2022, Winnie the Pooh entered the public domain, and an upstart movie producer, Rhys Frake-Waterfield, jumped at the opportunity to include Pooh and his friends in his gruesome horror film.

Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey was released earlier this month to the disgust of many Pooh fans. In the movie, Pooh and his friends Piglet, Rabbit, and Owl turn into rabid killers.

Granted, this movie has a very low budget and it isn’t very popular.

But still, many people, as well as the Walt Disney Company itself, are upset to see their family-friendly, innocent bear turned into a killer.

That being said, while Disney couldn’t do anything to stop the film from coming out, it still has intellectual property rights associated with Winnie the Pooh. 

That’s because the version of Winnie the Pooh that entered the public domain is the one based on the original 1926 book. Later versions of Winnie the Pooh that were popularized by Disney are still owned by the company.

That includes the first version of Pooh that wore a red shirt and later versions that were drawn in a very familiar Disney style.

Those were created well after the original Winnie the Pooh, who didn’t wear a shirt.

In addition to making sure no one tries to copy the later versions of Pooh, Disney also has another card it can play as well— trademark protection.

Trademarks are words, phrases, symbols, or designs that are used to identify and distinguish the goods or services of one party from those of another.

Trademarks are meant to protect consumers from confusion and deception. And unlike copyrights, they can last forever.

What this means is that Disney can enforce its trademark to ensure that no new Winnie the Pooh movies, books, toys—or anything— seem like they are created by Disney.

The Winnie the Pooh horror movie didn’t have that problem because no one would mistake this crazy looking version of Pooh for Disney’s much cuter version.

But this is going to be interesting because Winnie the Pooh is just the first of many iconic Disney characters that are going to entering the public domain in the coming years.

Others include Donald Duck, Goofy and perhaps the most iconic Disney character of all—Mickey Mouse.

Mickey Mouse was introduced to the world in a short film called “Steamboat Willie” in 1928.  

But like in the case of Winnie the Pooh, the original Mickey Mouse looks quite a bit different than the version of Mickey Mouse we’re all used to.

He looked more like a rat, didn’t speak and didn’t have the signature red Mickey Mouse shorts.

When the copyright for Mickey Mouse expires at the start of 2024, only the Steamboat Willie version of the character will be available for public use.

So we’ll see what happens. It’ll be fascinating to see how different people and companies use these characters as they enter the public domain and where Disney tries to draw the line.

Without the ability to use copyright law to protect its characters, the company might try to use trademark law instead.

But, like I said, as long as creators don’t try to make people believe that their works are associated with Disney, they should be free to use these characters and even profit from them.

On the other hand, if they try to pass off their works as coming from Disney, that will probably lead to lawsuits from the company.