Mickey Mouse Enters to Public Domain

The first trademarks by Walt Disney run out of copyright protection starting in 2024. This would have happened 20 years earlier had it not been for the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act of 1998" (as discussed here). For corporations, copyright lasts for 95 years from first release. (For individual creators/authors, copyright lasts for 70 years after the last author dies.)

Associated Press has a discussion about this: Mickey Mouse will soon belong to you and me — with some caveats. This article by Andrew Dalton (Dec 14, 2023) hits two notes that are not intuitive to the average person with only a modest understanding of copyrights. 

The Mickey Mouse Protection Act

When you hear The Mickey Mouse Protection act, you are probably thinking about how to keep the mouse’s tail out from under the heavy boots of the Florida State Governor. But the Law that is informally called the Mickey Mouse Protection Act of 1995 extended copyright protection for an additional 20 years, giving Disney until November 2024 before the first copyrights on Mickey Mouse begin to roll off copyright protection.  This means that by Christmas of 2024 you can start to borrow and modify aspects of Steamboat Willie’s 1928 movie including the world-famous Mickey Mouse figure. HOWEVER, step softly around the mouse because Disney does have dozens of trademarks, so what comes into public domain on the one four-fingered hand, might still have intellectual property protection on the other. 

Samsung Takes over from IBM in the US Patents issued in 2022

Samsung Electronics received the most US patents in 2022 for the first time since 1993. IBM, which had held the top spot for 29 consecutive years, came in second place.

Rank	Company	Patents
1	Samsung Electronics	6,248
2	IBM	4,398
3	Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing	3,024
4	Huawei Technologies	2,836
5	Canon	2,694
6	LG Electronics	2,641
7	Qualcomm	2,625
8	Intel	2,418
9	Apple	2,285
10	Toyota	2,214

 In terms of the total "assigned" patents, IBM has also lost #1 position to Samsung.

See prior posts about the Patent King, IBM: https://www.intellzine.com/2021/03/the-patent-king-ibm-for-28-years.html

Oil & Gas Spills in North America Since 2010

This was posted over in SustainZine originally, but it does pertain to Innovation. The costs of the old systems of fossil fuels are far greater than the price we all pay at the pump. Plus they are crazy subsidized (one estimate is 1% of GDP directly and about 6% indirectly).

But here's the article. *** SustainZine ***

A question I sometimes ask of people who think that fossil fuels are here forever more and that electrification of everything will never happen... 

Has there ever been an oil spill in Yellowstone National Park? If so, how many?

Innovative Countries -- Global Innovation Index

 

This is a great summary of innovation by country from Visual Capitalist. See the Global Innovation Index (GII) map here:https://www.visualcapitalist.com/most-innovative-countries-2022/

We, at Strategic Business Planning Company, www.SBP.com, are always interesting in all aspects of innovation. Sometimes we hear from a layperson or an executive that the most innovative country in the work is ...  

Israel and Ireland were mentioned in recent years.  One executive said that "all innovation comes from Israel". All right, admittedly, Israel is a great source of innovation and invention, but it is a very small country (population, GDP). In absolute terms, Israel is not even close, but in relative terms (adjusted for size of country), Israel is a very respectable #16 in the world (GII score of 50.2).