I agree, the lawyers must be waiting for all this to end up in the courts, Mickey Mouse will be the test for this. The argument will be that you cannot trademark a public domain character.

Trotter wrote:

I agree, the lawyers must be waiting for all this to end up in the courts, Mickey Mouse will be the test for this. The argument will be that you cannot trademark a public domain character.

A friend said essentially the same, that the argument is going to come down to whether a judge can be convinced (by the Disney side) that the slew of Trademarks (more than 80,000 iirc) they have taken out on Mickey can hold against anyone who wants to use him. They will also argue that the name is too closely related to their larger business and that the Trademarks restrict the use of Mickey Mouse in a commercial setting because anyone using it will automatically be linked to and thought of as Disney. That in fact could be a very important factor in any decision because Disney do have a valid point on that. If I use the Steamboat Willie 'Mickey' (the Mickey that will be PD) in a project, a large number of people could think that it is attached to Disney which they will argue is unfair on the consumer. (And many people know Disney as the House of Mouse). You know, as Disney are ever the champion of the little people

Whatever Disney decide to do in 2023 will likely set the tone for future PD drama episodes.

I suppose this means a third edition of Oliphaunt is a possibility now?

Here is one of the new Public Domain Poems

The Nameless Land

There lingering lights do golden lie
On grass more green than in gardens here,
On trees more tall that touch the sky
With silver leaves a-swinging clear:
By magic dewed they may not die
Where fades nor falls the endless year,
Where ageless afternoon goes by
O’er mead and mound and silent mere.
There draws no dusk of evening near,
Where voices move in veiléd choir,
Or shrill in sudden singing sheer,
And the woods are filled with wandering fire.

The wandering fires the woodland fill,
In glades for ever green they glow,
In dells that immortal dews distill
And fragrance of all flowers that grow.
There melodies of music spill,
And falling fountains splash and flow,
And a water white leaps down the hill
To seek the sea no sail doth know.
Its voices fill the valleys low,
Where breathing keen on bent and briar
The winds beyond the world’s edge blow
And wake to flame a wandering fire.
 
That wandering fire hath tongues of flame
Whose quenchless colours quiver clear
On leaf and land without a name
No heart may hope to anchor near.
A dreamless dark no stars proclaim,
A moonless night its marches drear,
A water wide no feet may tame,
A sea with shores encircled sheer.
A thousand leagues it lies from here,
And the foam doth flower upon the sea
‘Neath cliffs of crystal carven clear
On shining beaches blowing free.
 
There blowing free unbraided hair
Is meshed with light of moon and sun,
And tangled with those tresses fair
A gold and silver sheen is spun.
There feet do beat and white and bare
Do lissom limbs in dances run,
Their robes the wind, their raiment air —
Such loveliness to look upon
Nor Bran nor Brendan ever won,
Who foam beyond the furthest sea
Did dare, and dipped behind the sun
On winds unearthly wafted free.
 
Than Tir-nan-Og more fair and free,
Than Paradise more faint and far,
O! shore beyond the Shadowy Sea,
O! land forlorn where lost things are,
O! mountains where no man may be!
The solemn surges on the bar
Beyond the world’s edge waft to me;
I dream I see a wayward star,
Than beacon towers in Gondobar
More fair, where faint upon the sky
On hills imagineless and far
The lights of longing flare and die.

J.R.R. Tolkien

One that I've been looking forward to is E. A. Wyke-Smith's The Marvellous Land of Snergs! Hopefully Google Books and/or The Internet Archive will have that up soon.

Is Snergs PD now or next year? When it is available, I'll be sure to add it to my Tolkien Influencer Corpus.

I've also been meaning to start a repository with marked-up versions of Tolkien PD works.

It was first published—unillustrated—by Benn, London, in 1927. Next year will see the first US edition illustrated by William Morrow (New York: Harper, 1928). So, either the text itself now or the text in its classic illustrated edition a year from now.

I must note a correction (and hereafter remind myself neither to write after a night awake nor to remove any 'apparently'): the 1927 Benn edition was, in fact, illustrated by Morrow. A US edition was published in 1928. So, the whole charming thing is in the public domain now.

If anyone knows of any institution or private collector who has a copy of the Inter-University Magazine Vol.8, No.2, May 1927 then please let me know.

Would love to try and get the full text of The Grey Bridge of Tavrobel.