Lawyer Oscar Franklin Tan told Cointelegraph that people cannot use Steamboat Willie's version of Mickey to make anyone think their work is affiliated with Disney.
A lawyer has warned the crypto community about the limitations of using “Steamboat Willie,” a copyright formerly owned by Disney but now available in the public domain.
On Jan. 2, nonfungible tokens (NFTs) using a version of Mickey Mouse that appeared in the “Steamboat Willie” short film in 1928 made it to the trending collections list of the NFT marketplace OpenSea. One of the collections reached a 24-hour trading volume of 521 Ether (ETH), worth $1.2 million.
The lawyer added that copyright law protects artistic expression. However, Tan said that trademark law separately protects the identification of the source of the product. “So, you can’t use Steamboat Willie to make anyone think your work is affiliated with Disney.”
