Is it ironic that it's happening the same time that Disney is falling as a whole and looks like they are going through a hostile takeover? Oh, there is going to be sooo much BS in the near future. Nazi Mickey, Gay Mickey, rule 34. Etc. Whatever it's all trash anyway.

I noticed decades ago that Disney doesn’t do much with Mickey Mouse anymore. It could be because he’s not an interesting character, but it could also be because they knew his copyright was on the way out and they wanted to invest in newer things that still had many decades of protection ahead of them.

I expect they will find some kind of loophole to keep him. They may argue in court that if anyone can use Mickey mouse that it will be used to sell knock offs that infringe on their other copyrights, like say someone slaps a Mickey logo on some cheaply made Korean CGI fish movie so all the clueless grandmas will think it's Finding Nemo.