One is a colossus that spans theme parks, merchandise and films, with 150 Academy Awards, 225,000 staff and annual income of almost $90 billion.
The opposite is a third-generation household agency with 280 employees that packages scorching sauce, soy beans, multicoloured sprinkles, an herb referred to as horsetail, six sorts of panettone and 7 sorts of salt on the market in Paraguayan supermarkets.
But, Mickey is a family identify to rival Disney throughout the little-touristed South American nation of 6.1 million. There’s the cartoon mouse too – additionally referred to as Mickey, and indistinguishable from Mickey Mouse – whose iconic ears adorn the gates of the corporate’s manufacturing unit, its vans and a mascot in heavy demand at Paraguayan weddings.
“However do not get it twisted. There’s the Disney Mickey,” stated Viviana Blasco, 51, one in every of 5 siblings who run the enterprise, and “the Paraguayan Mickey, our Mickey.” Nonetheless, if the Paraguayan Mickey appears remarkably much like the Disney one, it is probably not totally a coincidence. Paraguayans are notoriously artistic – some would say light-fingered – in terms of mental property. Factories churn out knockoff Nike, Lacoste and Adidas clothes. Paraguay’s instructional authorities warned final 12 months that Harvard College Paraguay was awarding bogus medical levels. (The college has no connection to the extra well-known Harvard College.)
Paraguay ranks 86th out of 125 nations in an index compiled by the Property Rights Alliance, a analysis institute based mostly in Washington, D.C., scoring 1.7 out of 10 for copyright safety. However Mickey, the Blasco household enterprise, has survived a number of authorized challenges levelled by Disney. Viviana Blasco denied that her household had appropriated Disney’s property. “We did not take it. We constructed a model over a few years. Mickey grew in parallel to Walt Disney.”
The Mickey saga started, Blasco stated, in 1935. Blasco’s grandfather, Pascual, the son of Italian immigrants, noticed a chance to unfold some pleasure – and switch a revenue. He opened a tiny store promoting fruit and do-it-yourself gelato. It was referred to as Mickey. Precisely the place the concept got here from, stated Blasco, stays “one thing of a thriller.” However Pascual, she stated, typically vacationed in Buenos Aires – Argentina’s cosmopolitan capital, identified for film theaters. Mickey Mouse was making his silver-screen debut, together with in “The Gallopin’ Gaucho” (1928). No matter its origins, Mickey was successful.
By now, a “peaceable coexistence” reigns between Mickey and its “US doppelganger”, stated the smaller firm’s lawyer. This truce was hard-won. In 1998, Paraguay’s Supreme Court docket issued its remaining ruling: By means of many years of uninterrupted use, Mickey had acquired the best to be Mickey. The Mickey trademark had been registered in Paraguay since at the least 1956 – and Pascual’s descendants had since renewed it. Nonetheless, Mickey’s authorized immunity in Paraguay, Blasco stated, won’t lengthen to promoting its merchandise overseas. “We have by no means tried.”
The opposite is a third-generation household agency with 280 employees that packages scorching sauce, soy beans, multicoloured sprinkles, an herb referred to as horsetail, six sorts of panettone and 7 sorts of salt on the market in Paraguayan supermarkets.
But, Mickey is a family identify to rival Disney throughout the little-touristed South American nation of 6.1 million. There’s the cartoon mouse too – additionally referred to as Mickey, and indistinguishable from Mickey Mouse – whose iconic ears adorn the gates of the corporate’s manufacturing unit, its vans and a mascot in heavy demand at Paraguayan weddings.
“However do not get it twisted. There’s the Disney Mickey,” stated Viviana Blasco, 51, one in every of 5 siblings who run the enterprise, and “the Paraguayan Mickey, our Mickey.” Nonetheless, if the Paraguayan Mickey appears remarkably much like the Disney one, it is probably not totally a coincidence. Paraguayans are notoriously artistic – some would say light-fingered – in terms of mental property. Factories churn out knockoff Nike, Lacoste and Adidas clothes. Paraguay’s instructional authorities warned final 12 months that Harvard College Paraguay was awarding bogus medical levels. (The college has no connection to the extra well-known Harvard College.)
Paraguay ranks 86th out of 125 nations in an index compiled by the Property Rights Alliance, a analysis institute based mostly in Washington, D.C., scoring 1.7 out of 10 for copyright safety. However Mickey, the Blasco household enterprise, has survived a number of authorized challenges levelled by Disney. Viviana Blasco denied that her household had appropriated Disney’s property. “We did not take it. We constructed a model over a few years. Mickey grew in parallel to Walt Disney.”
The Mickey saga started, Blasco stated, in 1935. Blasco’s grandfather, Pascual, the son of Italian immigrants, noticed a chance to unfold some pleasure – and switch a revenue. He opened a tiny store promoting fruit and do-it-yourself gelato. It was referred to as Mickey. Precisely the place the concept got here from, stated Blasco, stays “one thing of a thriller.” However Pascual, she stated, typically vacationed in Buenos Aires – Argentina’s cosmopolitan capital, identified for film theaters. Mickey Mouse was making his silver-screen debut, together with in “The Gallopin’ Gaucho” (1928). No matter its origins, Mickey was successful.
By now, a “peaceable coexistence” reigns between Mickey and its “US doppelganger”, stated the smaller firm’s lawyer. This truce was hard-won. In 1998, Paraguay’s Supreme Court docket issued its remaining ruling: By means of many years of uninterrupted use, Mickey had acquired the best to be Mickey. The Mickey trademark had been registered in Paraguay since at the least 1956 – and Pascual’s descendants had since renewed it. Nonetheless, Mickey’s authorized immunity in Paraguay, Blasco stated, won’t lengthen to promoting its merchandise overseas. “We have by no means tried.”
