Steamboat Willie is a play on its name. "Mickey Mouse made an appearance in a film for the first time that very much relied on another copyrighted work that helped propel its popularity," McLeod ...

Barely two days in the public domain, the earliest iteration of Mickey Mouse is on a rampage. Slashed free of Disney’s copyright as of Monday, the iconic character from Steamboat Willie is ...

The Walt Disney Company lost the copyright to its inaugural Mickey Mouse cartoon, Steamboat Willie, on January 1, 2024, putting the earliest iteration of Mickey Mouse into the public domain.

The 1928 short, "Steamboat Willie," is often cited as the debut of Mickey Mouse, though he did show up in an early short called "Plane Crazy" the same year, in which tried to imitate Charles ...