They still have a trademark on Mickey mouse, so it’s not carte blanche. What extent the trade mark has isn’t perfectly clear, but it’s pretty powerful.
As long as you only use this Mickey in artistic work then it’s fine. If you start using it as branding and marketing like slapping that Mickey on a box of cereals then Disney will come after you because they can say your product causes consumer confusion and consumers associate your product with Disney. Which violates the trademark.
So if you want to make a Steamboat Willie 2 the promotional material needs to be very clear that it’s not a Disney production.
I’m not totally sure if you could make a sequel under trade mark law since the Mickey character is still trade marked for new works, maybe if it were free it would be ok. If you wanted to use clips from the original work in a music video or something then you should be able to do that.
Trademark law only prohibits the use of a trademarked character if doing so “is likely to cause confusion, or to cause mistake, or to deceive” consumers about the source or sponsorship of the new product
They still have a trademark on Mickey mouse, so it’s not carte blanche. What extent the trade mark has isn’t perfectly clear, but it’s pretty powerful.
As long as you only use this Mickey in artistic work then it’s fine. If you start using it as branding and marketing like slapping that Mickey on a box of cereals then Disney will come after you because they can say your product causes consumer confusion and consumers associate your product with Disney. Which violates the trademark.
So if you want to make a Steamboat Willie 2 the promotional material needs to be very clear that it’s not a Disney production.
I’m not totally sure if you could make a sequel under trade mark law since the Mickey character is still trade marked for new works, maybe if it were free it would be ok. If you wanted to use clips from the original work in a music video or something then you should be able to do that.
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https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/mickey/