Paraguay Loves Its Cartoon Mouse Mickey. Disney Does Not (msn.com)
- Reference: 0175003367
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/09/15/2344222/paraguay-loves-its-cartoon-mouse-mickey-disney-does-not
- Source link: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/paraguay-loves-mickey-the-cartoon-mouse-disney-doesn-t/ar-AA1qytl0
Its mascot — on t-shirts, coffee cups, and "in heavy demand at Paraguayan weddings" — is [2]a mouse named Mickey . 51-year-old Viviana Blasco — one of five siblings who run the business — told the Times that it all began back in 1935:
> Ms. Blasco's grandfather, Pascual, the son of Italian immigrants, saw an opportunity to spread some joy — and turn a profit. He opened a tiny shop selling fruit and homemade gelato. It was called Mickey... Pascual, she said, often vacationed in Buenos Aires — Argentina's cosmopolitan capital... "On one of his trips, he must have seen the famous mouse," Ms. Blasco said... A few years later, Pascual [3]opened the Mickey Ice Cream Parlor, Café and Confectioners. By 1969, Mickey was selling rice, sugar and baking soda in packages now decorated with the eponymous mouse.
"Mickey resonates with Paraguayans' sense of nostalgia, said Euge Aquino, a TV chef and social media [4]influencer who uses its ingredients to make comfort food like pastel mandi'o (yuca and beef empanadas)... Mickey's popularity, she said, also has a lot to do with the mascot handing out candy outside the factory gates every Christmas: a tradition dating back to 1983."
> By now, a "peaceful coexistence" reigns between Mickey and its United States doppelgänger, said Elba Rosa Britez, 72, the smaller company's lawyer. This truce was hard-won. In 1991, Disney filed a trademark violation claim with Paraguay's Ministry of Business and Industry that was rejected. The company then filed a lawsuit, but in 1995 a trademark tribunal ruled in Mickey's favor. There, one judge agreed that Paraguayans could easily confuse the Disney Mickey and the Paraguayan Mickey. But Disney didn't reckon on a "legal loophole," Ms Britez explained. The Mickey trademark had been registered in Paraguay since at least 1956 — and Pascual's descendants had since renewed it — without protest from the multinational. In 1998, Paraguay's Supreme Court issued its final ruling. Through decades of uninterrupted use, Mickey had acquired the right to be Mickey.
>
> "I jumped for joy," Ms Britez said. Mickey's legal immunity in Paraguay, Ms. Blasco acknowledged, might not extend to selling its products abroad. "We've never tried."
"Some lining up to meet the mascot said Mickey's David-vs-Goliath triumph against Disney filled them with national pride..."
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/paraguay-loves-mickey-the-cartoon-mouse-disney-doesn-t/ar-AA1qytl0
[2] https://www.tiktok.com/@mickeyparaguay?lang=en
[3] https://mickey.com.py/nosotros/#historia
[4] https://www.instagram.com/aquino_euge/?hl=en
Not a loop hole (Score:4, Interesting)
It's a common thing in almost all western trade mark law, you must defend a trade mark or lose it. Kleenex, cola, chesterfield, Aspirin, Heroin, Linoleum, Trampoline are all examples of trademarked names that have become generic. A symbol like Mickey mouse is much less common and even though the Paraguayan mouse is a copy of the Disney mouse, in Paraguay it has been used too long now for Disney to now try and defend it.
Re: (Score:2)
> It's a common thing in almost all western trade mark law, you must defend a trade mark or lose it. Kleenex, cola, chesterfield, Aspirin, Heroin, Linoleum, Trampoline are all examples of trademarked names that have become generic. A symbol like Mickey mouse is much less common and even though the Paraguayan mouse is a copy of the Disney mouse, in Paraguay it has been used too long now for Disney to now try and defend it.
While I fully agree with you, [1]Bayer lost aspirin [history.com]due to expring patents and trademarks because because Germany failed to win WWi.
[1] https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/bayer-patents-aspirin#
Re: (Score:1)
yeah, you can lose trademarks to common use.
also if the company sponsoring your trademark loses a world war , there uh might be problems, maybe, except nowadays there's WIPO and global IP treaties that weren't even imaginable back then.
but yeah, nazis do tend to cause problems lol.
Re: (Score:1)
dammit i meant "country" not "company". sigh.
Re: (Score:2)
This isn't a case of "they didn't defend it." This was a case of "didn't renew it." It's like they let their DNS registration lapse somehow, and someone else registered it.
Re: (Score:2)
> It's a common thing in almost all western trade mark law, you must defend a trade mark or lose it. Kleenex, cola, chesterfield, Aspirin, Heroin, Linoleum, Trampoline are all examples of trademarked names that have become generic.
Kleenex is still a registered, enforceable trademark in the United States.
According to [1]Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], the primary reason the inventor of linoleum lost his trademark lawsuit is that he never registered it as a trademark (though the court did say that even if it had been registered, it had already become a generic term).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linoleum
US not like Elsewhere (Score:2)
> It's a common thing in almost all western trade mark law, you must defend a trade mark or lose it.
No, that's the case in the US, elsewhere what tends to be important is that you continue to use it, you do not have to vigorously defend it at every turn. I believe that this is why US companies are so insane about enforcing their trademarks while, in most other countries, companies are generally (though not always) a bit more sensible about it.
This makes me happy (Score:2)
I reckon that just about anything which pisses off the House of Mouse is a very good thing. Disney can go suck on a tailpipe as far as I'm concerned.
Re: (Score:2)
Careful, that might be a [1]trademark infringement. [flickr.com]
[1] https://www.flickr.com/photos/27889738@N07/5258133814
Re: (Score:2)
Paraguay has a long history of taking on much bigger opponents, in 1864-1870 they took on the combined might of Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, so it's no surprise that this time they'd take on the might of the Walt Disney Company.
You can despise two things at once. (Score:2)
Cultural Manorialism (aka the current state of copyright law) is pernicious bullshiznit, but that doesn't mean you have to approve of lame, fully willful copycatting.
Related fun fact: Burger King in Australia ... (Score:2)
is called [1]Hungry Jack's [wikipedia.org] because there was already a "Burger King" and the local bloke would not sell. Per Wikipedia, the resulting legal battle "introduced the American legal concept of good faith negotiations into the Australian legal system"
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_Jack's
So . . . (Score:2)
we're calling this a Mickey Mouse court ruling? :)
hawk
So - use the Public Domain Mickey Mouse (Score:2)
Micky Mouse imagery from Steamboat Willie is in the public domain.
And you cannot use trademark law to try to enforce a de facto copyright on a public domain image.
[1]https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/... [duke.edu] "You cannot use Mickey Mouse in a way that misleads consumers into thinking your work is sponsored by Disney."
[1] https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/mickey/
Re: (Score:2)
They don't need to change though, they won the legal fight. Primarily because Disney didn't object over many years of the trademark being registered in Paraguay.
Defend the trademark or lose it; which is why so many companies act like assholes over their trademarks. In this case, Disney either didn't know about the Paraguay trademark, or was ignoring it.