Today, the 3rd of September, 2014 Disney has field a block to Deadmau5’s trademark request in the United States. Disney claims that the iconic mouse logo is too similar to the famous Mickey Mouse character in various Disney productions. Deadmau5 also known as Joel Zimmerman applied for the trademark a year ago and had also trademarked the sign in over 30 countries, amongst Japan, Germany, UK.
Deadmau5 used the logo in his records, artwork, in live shows he wears the large helmet in the shape of the logo, music productions, video productions. There is a clear similarity between the Mickey Mouse logo. Disney has the Mickey Mouse logo on costumes, toys, dolls and endless other items they retail under it, therefore Disney began an extensive investigation on the matter since April.
From a brief look to the famous electronic musician Joel Zimmerman’s Twitter account, he claims that they might have resemblance but the service he offers as a musician is in no relation close to Disney’s cartoon, or in Joel’s words: “Disney thinks you might confuse an established electronic musician / performer with a cartoon mouse.”
Has Disney declared undisputed multinational-territorial intellectual property rights on every mouse resemblance character / logo / costume? It is a battle between a well established entertainment and cartoon enterprise and a well known global artist, will the wolf be able to dwell with a lamb, or in our case would the iconic Mickey be able to dwell with a “Dead mouse” under the allegedly similar trademark?
