Hagelberg.A.G Mickey Mouse Postcards

[sallieforth]

Hello

I am interested in using images of Mickey Mouse from this publisher's postcards for commercial use - putting them on t-shirts, mugs etc Does anyone know if they are in the public domain? The Publishers no longer exist and the postcards are from 1930s. The mice look nothing like the modern Disney Mickey Mouse. Many thanks Sallie

[AndyJ]

Hi sallieforth and welcome,

As you probably know the Wolf Hagelberg AG company produced the cards under licence from Walt Disney. Hagelberg AG went bankrupt in 1933. The copyright situation concerning the MIckey Mouse images used on the postcards is complicated. One website dealing in collectable postcards says that the images were drawn by Walt Disney himself, but it is equally possible that they were redrawn by the Hagelberg staff specifically for the postcards series. Even if Walt Disney was the artist, the way that US copyright law operated at that time (using registration for a fixed 28 renewable period), means that when the cards were first published in Germany, only Germany copyright law (Urheberrechtsgesetz – UrhG) will have applied, not US law. This was because, although the USA was not a member of the two major international copyright treaties, the Universal Copyright Convention and the Berne Convention, the two countries had concluded a bi-lateral agreement on copyright in 1892 (see Presidential Proclamation No 24 of 15 April 1892). The UrhG of the time said that copyright was based on the lifetime of the author plus fifty years from the end of the year of death of the artist. If the artist was Walt Disney, then since he didn't die until 1966, copyright would have run until 2017; however this period was extended by 20 years to any work which was in copyright in 1995, so the term now lasts until 1 Jan 2037. On the other hand, if the actual artist was a German employee of Hagelberg AG, the term would have been based on that person's lifetime plus 50 or 70 years. However, taking this possibility a stage futher, if the artist was anonymous, as seems probable, the actual term under the UrhG becomes 70 years from the date the works (the postcards) were first published, which we know must have been before 1933, in which case the postcards are now in the public domain (see section 66 of the UrhG).

I cannot say which scenario definitely applies, but given that the Disney Corporation are extremely robust in defending their intellectual property, I suspect that they will maintain that Walt Disney was the author of the images, and therefore the copyright will last until 2037. If a Hagelberg artist is named or acknowledged on the cards themselves, this would be prima facie evidence that Walt Disney was not the artist, and you would then need to discover, if possible, when the actual artist died, in order to determine the copyright term. Obviously, if the artist was anonymous, no-one will be named on the cards, and you would need to find other evidence to support that particular version of events.

I hope this helps.

[sallieforth]

Thank you so much for this information.
Kind regards, Sallie