Betty Boop is one of the most iconic cartoons of the 20th century. A pinup drawn to look like a 1920s flapper, the character debuted nearly a century ago and quickly became a household name: In 1932, just two years after her debut, one newspaper article dubbed Betty Boop "without question…the most popular film personage on the screen today."

Today, the character enters the public domain, meaning it's free for anyone to use—but perhaps only as a dog. The bizarre saga illustrates what's wrong with modern copyright law.

Under the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, creative works are copyrighted until 70 years after the author's death, and works published between 1924 and 1978 are protected for 95 years. Therefore, anything originally published in 1930 enters the public domain today.

That includes Dizzy Dishes, the six-minute cartoon that featured the first appearance of Betty Boop. The cartoon and the character are now fair game, but the version of the character introduced in Dizzy Dishes was different from the one we know today.

Betty "was dog-like; a singing, dancing hybrid being with huge, droopy Cocker Spaniel-like eyes, a button of a nose and long puppy dog ears that tossed back and forth as she sang and danced," according to Fleischer Studios, the animation company that created the character. Her appearance changed over time, and she was not fully human until January 1932.

Because of this, the company says it actually still owns the character. In a statement, Fleischer Studios CEO Mark Fleischer said Dizzy Dishes merely featured a "precursor" of Betty Boop, not "the distinctively different and independently protectible expression of the character in use by Fleischer Studios today."

"While the copyright in the 'Dizzy Dishes' cartoon may fall into the public domain in 2026, this does not affect Fleischer Studios' copyright in the fully developed BETTY BOOP character…[which] will therefore remain in force for some years to come," Fleischer added.

The estate of Arthur Conan Doyle made a similar argument for over two decades: The majority of Doyle's works featuring the character of Sherlock Holmes entered the public domain in 1998, but his estate argued the character remained protected until all works were free. Federal courts split the difference, finding the character was in the public domain but specific traits introduced in the later stories were still protected.

As a result, Fleischer Studios likely can't say it still owns Betty Boop completely, but it can plausibly claim the version with dog ears is the only one now in the public domain, and each subsequent version will only become available when it turns 95 years old.

Of course, when one person or company can hold the exclusive rights to a character for a century or more, what's another couple of years?

Copyrights lasting multiple generations undermine their entire purpose. Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution grants Congress the power to set copyright terms "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." The first U.S. copyright law, passed in 1790, allowed authors to protect their works for up to 28 years.

Congress expanded the length of those terms numerous times since. But it's hard to argue that such generous protections "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." When Betty Boop debuted in 1930, the longest copyright term was 56 years; her creators clearly found that acceptable, or they wouldn't have released the cartoon.

It's difficult to see how protecting a character for 95 years encourages innovation while protecting a nearly identical version for only 93 years does not.

Unlike century-long copyright protections, the public domain actually drives progress and innovation. In 2025, Guillermo del Toro released a well-reviewed adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and one of the year's highest-grossing films, Wicked: For Good, was adapted from L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz series. This year will see new adaptations of King Lear, The Odyssey, and Wuthering Heights. Each one is based on a previous work in the public domain, allowing filmmakers free rein to adapt and interpret.