Fake Mickey Mouse statues at the Beijing Olympics
A little over a year has passed since China’s fake Disneyland was exposed and forced to clean up its act, but high profile examples of international trademark violations seem to still exist in Beijing. With two weeks to go until the start of the Olympics, the Japanese press has discovered that Beijing has built fake Mickey Mouse statues to celebrate the games.
Below is a news report from Fuji TV (with screen capture images under it).
Japan’s TBS news also covered the mouse statues, and in both video reports, Beijing residents asked about the statues believed the character depicted was Mickey Mouse.
How did the local city government respond when asked by the press about the mouse statues? Pink Tentacle has reported the following (from the Yomiuri):
When asked about the resemblance to Mickey, a spokesperson replied, “They have square holes in their ears. They are not copies.” The spokesperson suggested the statues are unique because they incorporate the themes of old Chinese coins (the square holes), the year of the rat, the Olympics and the financial district into the design. However, children passing by the statues were seen pointing and saying, “Look! It’s Mickey!”
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Communist China, respect our Intellectual property but we won’t respect your Intellectual property…
Huh?
What IP did China invent/create that ANYONE else in the world stole?
The Chinese Government went after some companies for stealing their IP’s but really don’t give a damn when comes to there people’s IP’s. There was some articles I’ve read which you would have to google to find them.
Communist China, repsect our Intellectual property but we won’t respect your Intellectual property…
For the survey, I’m torn between answering “Yes” since if I did have to choose what it looked like, it would be Mickey Mouse, and “No” since if it was supposed to be a copy, then it’s a piss-poor copy.
The statues are fugs anyway…I’m surprised someone even paid for them.
You’d think it wouldn’t be hard to make some random athletic animals for statues instead of just copying Mickey Mouse, but here we are. :p
there are plenty of mouse or characters with that same round, big ear form; mighty mouse and jerry… thats all I can remember. I think, what really seperates this statue is his long, pointed nose shape, and also, mickey was short and fat. This dude appears to be athletic haha.
they look damn ugly… like some nightmare mickey mouse…
it is tastelessly ugly!!! the mickey mouse itself is ugly enough but this is even worse!!
i don’t get the problem. So they created a mickey mouse like char and people who’s see’s it obviously comes to a quick conclusion that it is MM, so what?
and as if japan’s never done the same
http://thedisneylandexpert.blogspot.com/2007/03/fake-disneyland.html
Nara Dreamland lacked the mouse, though.
That’s not to say they have never done the same:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHFmwbnweR8
Oh ok thanks for pointing this out, considering this is about China and not Japan.
Well, it’s just tit for tat.
So who cares anyway, except Disney Corp? MM has been around since the 1930’s and ought to be considered in the public domain for purposes such as this. If it weren’t such a bad copy without square ear holes, maybe a case could be made. But I would venture that this is free advertising for Disney Corp. So what will the Great Disney Corp. do, anyway? Why, of course… What any self-respecting cartoon giant would do… Litigate. Sue those commie capitalists for copyright infringement!
RHG
Spot on. Does Chinese copyright law even cover Mickey Mouse any more? I don’t see any trademark infringing going on here, so what is the problem?
who cares?
all things disney are made in china, so china has the right to make what they want to make
I like international IP law and Disney’s hamhanded history of enforcing its IP even less than China’s history of theft.
So in this battle of doucheness, I declare China the least douche-baggy.
Sad thing is, people seem to think any anthropomorphic mouse is Mickey.
Disney’s lawyers *love* that idea.
I seem to remember Disney doing a great job of ripping off many other ideas as well:
Little Mermaid
Beauty and the Beast
Sleeping Beauty
… etc.
They didn’t “rip off” those stories – They produced an animated feature of old folk-tales under no copyright. Same deal with Beowulf, any Arthurian legend, Robin Hood, anything involving Greek Gods, etc.
Their interpretation of the characters in animated form is IP. The story itself is not.
They did rip off the lion king…
http://www.kimbawlion.com/rant2.htm
I wonder if Disneyland corpoation knew about the Mickey Mouse Chinese used . If not i hope Disney corporation will punish China for their idea.
everyone should steal from Disney, or better yet just ignore them and make your own culture instead of sucking down their homogenized tripe. mmm. tripe.
I’m not comfortable with the square holes in his ears. Are they supposed to be piercings? Or did he have a mishap with a cookie cutter?
They are supposed to represent Chinese coins
Just because it’s a mouse doesn’t mean it’s Mickey Mouse? Honestly, it looks a lot more like Mighty Mouse to me; even the color scheme is similar. For anyone who knows who that is, congratz XD.
Besides, nearly anything can be seen as a copy/rip-off of something else.
Here I come to save the daayyy!
The Chinese people love Rats, they eat them all of the time.
What we didn’t hear:
Say its Mickey Mouse or you go to Jail!!!
“It is certainly Mickey Mouse”
It’s odd… if this were done by some New York or Tokyo based artist as some kind of “modern art” satire piece with some tactfully crafted “artist’s statement” it would likely be well received by the art crowd and hipsters… however, since it’s Chinese people who made this we jump straight to the whole “tacky rip-off” conclusion/condemnation.
As far as how I feel on this… Who cares if it resembles Mickey Mouse to some degree? Do we really need to give a rat’s ass about this kind of intellectual property violation? As someone else here mentioned… Mickey Mouse has long since passed the point that it should be considered public domain and everyone’s property!
Very uninformed.
This isn’t meant to be a mouse but a rat.
2008 in Chinese astrology is the Year of the Rat, you see rat-statues on the streets everywhere.
The holes in the ears are meant to make the ears look like old Chinese coins, which are a symbol of good luck.
Why is it all about Mickey Mouse? They look much more like MIGHTY MOUSE.
http://www.gavinshearer.com/photos/weblog/2005_08_09_mightymouse.jpg
Which makes much more sense, since Mighty Mouse would be great at sports.
Good luck suing China.
US lawyers will be busy. Also entertaining , amusing,and fun.
This isn’t about the legality of the action – It’s about the lack of creativity on China’s behalf. With 1/6 of the entire world living within their borders, you’d think they could find someone to create an original-looking character.
The Chinese government does not respect anyone this world. Who can remember when the Chinese government banned Japanese Animes during the first hour of the day just to feed their pride by telling her people that Chinese animes are the best? It was very sad for those like that boy at youtube who love Doraemon to see such ridiculous move by their corrupt government.
I couldve made a better rat athlete dude
I had heard somewhere that Mickey had been released into public domain at some point, does anyone know if that’s true and/or relevant?