Paraguay Loves Its Cartoon Mouse Mickey. Disney Does Not

The New York Times looks at 'a third-generation family firm' in Paraguay 'with 280 workers that packages hot sauce, soy beans...and seven kinds of salt for sale in Paraguayan supermarkets.'

Its mascot — on t-shirts, coffee cups, and 'in heavy demand at Paraguayan weddings' — is a mouse named Mickey. 51-year-old Viviana Blasco — one of five siblings who run the business — told the Times that it all began back in 1935:

Ms. Blasco's grandfather, Pascual, the son of Italian immigrants, saw an opportunity to spread some joy — and turn a profit. He opened a tiny shop selling fruit and homemade gelato. It was called Mickey... Pascual, she said, often vacationed in Buenos Aires — Argentina's cosmopolitan capital... 'On one of his trips, he must have seen the famous mouse,' Ms. Blasco said... A few years later, Pascual opened the Mickey Ice Cream Parlor, Café and Confectioners. By 1969, Mickey was selling rice, sugar and baking soda in packages now decorated with the eponymous mouse.

'Mickey resonates with Paraguayans' sense of nostalgia, said Euge Aquino, a TV chef and social media influencer who uses its ingredients to make comfort food like pastel mandi'o (yuca and beef empanadas)... Mickey's popularity, she said, also has a lot to do with the mascot handing out candy outside the factory gates every Christmas: a tradition dating back to 1983.'
By now, a 'peaceful coexistence' reigns between Mickey and its United States doppelgänger, said Elba Rosa Britez, 72, the smaller company's lawyer. This truce was hard-won. In 1991, Disney filed a trademark violation claim with Paraguay's Ministry of Business and Industry that was rejected. The company then filed a lawsuit, but in 1995 a trademark tribunal ruled in Mickey's favor. There, one judge agreed that Paraguayans could easily confuse the Disney Mickey and the Paraguayan Mickey. But Disney didn't reckon on a 'legal loophole,' Ms Britez explained. The Mickey trademark had been registered in Paraguay since at least 1956 — and Pascual's descendants had since renewed it — without protest from the multinational. In 1998, Paraguay's Supreme Court issued its final ruling. Through decades of uninterrupted use, Mickey had acquired the right to be Mickey.

'I jumped for joy,' Ms Britez said. Mickey's legal immunity in Paraguay, Ms. Blasco acknowledged, might not extend to selling its products abroad. 'We've never tried.'
'Some lining up to meet the mascot said Mickey's David-vs-Goliath triumph against Disney filled them with national pride...'

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