Will we see another copyright extension in 2018?

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Mickey Mouse^TM will still be a copyrighted figure when the earth is swallowed by the sun.

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Trademarks are different things to copyright. All Disney would loose is the royalties for publishing Steamboat Willie, not the use of Mickey as a trademarked figure for their own purposes.

So when expiry on the first batman comics run out, you can start printing, selling and scanning them online without harm, but you wouldn't be able to start selling Batman merchandise.

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Does Disney really make much use of Steamboat Willie qua Steamboat Willie any more? Somehow I don't think it does.

Not really, but they do make a healthy revenue from sales and royalties from their classics - Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo would all be in the public domain or on the threshold if the copyright had not been extended.

There is a lot of murky business that goes on here as well. Arthur Conan Doyle's estate is pretty notorious, in that it has control of like three Sherlock stories, but pounces on all adaptions to try and claim they're lifting elements from the copyrighted tales. So most adaptors end up paying them off preemptively.

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Incidentally, while there won't be another copyright extension in the US anytime soon, the 70 year term seems to be becoming standard: Japan and Canada have both extended their copyright terms this year, which will take quite a few famous individuals - Steinbeck, Huxley, Orwell, Fleming, Hemingway, Frost, Plath, CS Lewis, Upton Sinclair, Cocteau, TS Eliot etc of the public domain.

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Megabump as once again we are about to celebrate Public Domain Day in the USA as everything made in 1926 enters the public domain.

This thread's knee-jerk cynicism is so misguided. People really, really underestimated how Congress' basic bias is to never pass any significant legislation ever.

You say that, but in 2018 Congress passed a huge reform to copyright for musical recordings, which previously had a very vague patchwork of state laws regarding to the public domain - that's why this year will see a huge backlog of pre-1923 music being suddenly made available. (100 year long durations though for pre-1946 music, with 115 year long copyrights for 1946-56 music and not much clarity for music from 56-72).

Trademarks are different things to copyright. All Disney would loose is the royalties for publishing Steamboat Willie, not the use of Mickey as a trademarked figure for their own purposes.

So when expiry on the first batman comics run out, you can start printing, selling and scanning them online without harm, but you wouldn't be able to start selling Batman merchandise.

Can you explain that better? That did not make sense to me.

Copyright applies for a work (and its expression as an idea) So Disney owns a copyright for the animated short Steamboat Willie, meaning they have the exclusive right to publish, copy and make derivative works based on Steamboat Willie. (Note this does not automatically mean everything mickey related will be in PD - when say the first Batman comic's copyright expires, this does not mean that The Dark Knight will also be free!)

A trademark is a specific branding for individual logos, words and icons that can pretty much be renewed indefinitely (i.e. until it remains profitable). For example, though Tarzan of the Apes is public domain as its copyright has expired, the Edgar Rice Boroughs estate has a trademark on the name "Tarzan" so their lawyers will jump on you if you, say, write a derivative book with "Tarzan" in the title (as more and more of these franchises start falling into this grey area, I imagine more definitive precedent will be set, but this has been the modus operandi of quasi-public domain stuff like Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes and The Wizard of Oz). The issue rationale behind trademarks is consumer confusion - a hack animation studio can't just slap a mouse logo on their work to deceive customers into thinking it's Disney, nor can you mass manufacture merch with Batman on it without lawyers descending.