Disney lost so much money they can't do lobbying anymore and extend their patents
L M A O
(media.kotakuinaction2.win)
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It was not a thing in the past because Disney could buy politicians to extend patents, so every single time it was coming closer, they just went full lobby mode and got more years into the law. But now they are so broke after so many failures that they didn't even managed to do that.
I think you mean copyrights. Patents still expire in the lifetime of their creator, I think.
This is one of the reasons WD-40 was never patented--and why there are no generics.
A patent would require them to disclose how it's made.
Yeah patents need to be obliterated - inventors of products have the first mover advantage on a product which is easily incentive enough to invent something. You don't need to give them a 20-year heat start - a smart inventor with a good product can make a ton of money without a patent.
Could someone steal the design and compete? Sure, but it would take them years to do so because you would have the design and already be producing the product and agile enough to respond far before a competitor could defeat you. And if they are able to defeat you, it's because you were unable to maintain market viability.
Patents are functionally just tools used to beat other inventors with the club of the law to try to get government-mandated monopolies.
I imagine pissing off a significant chunk of the politicians who could help extend your copyright probably also doesnt help. Not that they would say no, but probably that it would make them angry enough the money needed to make them dance is now too high.
They've been using the Steamboat Willy cartoon as a trademark for the last few years in preparation for this since trademarks don't expire.
Really though the entire concept of IP is bullshit. The idea that you could still own someone's ideas long after they're dead is absurd, nor could you sell a person's thoughts any more than their body or soul.
I certainly hope this actually happens. Nothing would please me quite so much, as seeing Disney's execs seething over losing the rights to one of their biggest characters.
AFAIK they still own the rights to the current version of Mickey. Only the oldest version in the picture above is affected, I think.
Which is why they have the new design look a lot like the old design.
That's a fair point, but I suppose that means the different and new variants would just have to be in black and white.
Walt Disney wasn't anti-jew, he was neutral on the JQ. Walt was rabidly anti-communist. And when Walt vehemently opposed unionization efforts within his own company by Marxist union thugs, his anti-communism was labeled anti-semetic by the jewish union president. Makes you wonder why a jew considers anti-communism to be anti-semetic.
And people wonder why I shit on unions.
Disney wasn't an antisemite. Many of his cartoonists were jewish and begged him to get involved with their union stuff.
Can’t wait for the horror movie version (literally happened with Winnie the Pop and The Grinch.)
And the Banana Splits, I think.
The Banana Splits was one almost certainly the original FNAF movie before that fell through for whatever reason, and it was just hastily redone with different worthless license they had nearby.
Wait, really?
Probably. It was never confirmed, but the timeline lines up almost too perfectly for anything else. Because they didn't just pull up one day and say "let's use an obscure IP to make a shitty horror movie that we don't advertise."
So its either a massive coincidence, or Scott pulled out of the deal with the guys behind the first announced FNAF movie some years back and they just went ahead with it anyway with different costumes and names.
I loved that show as a little kid.
Looking at it now (along with the rest of the stuff from the late 60s and early 70s that they showed on Saturday mornings) ... wow, they were really selling the hippie motif to kids hard.
Disney is a prime example of why IP laws are a joke.
I woulda thought China was a better example. If you can't enforce an IP law, what is the point at all?
That so? As soon as shit becomes public domain I don't know if we should show them how it's done making good stories with those characters
Or abuse the shit out of them just to spite Disney, maybe both?
I expect Mickey will get the Winnie the Pooh treatment and immediately spawn a bunch of bad horror movies
Nothing we can do will really matter to them much.
The big losses will come from the constant little chippings from more "accurate" bootlegs that can now be released in real stores, ESL immigrant businesses that can brand themselves more openly, and other uses like that.
Now Disney will have to compete with the prices other Mickey Mouse toys on the same aisle as them, and no longer being able to charge absurd prices for a daycare to hang up some ears.
The actual entertainment creation uses are basically negligible short of as funny joke, like the Winnie the Poo horror movie was.
INAL, but my guess is that Disney will let this lapse and defend the original IP as a Trademark, which will protect them for eternity as long as they continue to use it.
Basically, yeah. Disney has been using a snippet of Steamboat Willie as part of their title cards for a while now which allows them to claim it as a trademark. Thing is... they haven't been doing the same thing for other characters.
Good Disney-pedo memes incoming.
How long until we get a horror adaptation similar to that Pooh horror movie?
Not quite.
Disney has spent enough money and effort on making Mikey's early design into what could be considered a trademark. Those don't expire.
Prediction: Disney is going to post a huge loss and blame it on this.
They're going to discover what Japanese cartoonists did, and that when people are free to copy and distribute your characters, you get more famous and popular and make more money.
But hey, for some reason Disney believes otherwise so, I mean, it's not illegal to be wrong.