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Works are in the public domain if they are not covered by the intellectual property right known as copyright, or if the intellectual property rights to the works have expired.[1] Works automatically enter the public domain when their copyright has expired.[2] The United States Copyright Office is a federal agency tasked with maintaining copyright records.
All works first published or released in the United States before January 1, 1929, have lost their copyright protection 95 years later, effective January 1, 2024. In the same manner, works published in 1929 will enter the public domain as of January 1, 2025, and this cycle will repeat until works published in 1977 enter the public domain on January 1, 2073. Works of corporate authorship will continue to adhere to the ninety-five year term following the 2073 date. Under current copyright law, beginning in 2049, 1978 and beyond works by creators who died seven decades earlier will expire each year.[3] For example, if a creator were to die in 2002, their works' copyright would last through the end of 2072 and enter the public domain on January 1, 2073.
Works that were published without a copyright notice before 1977 are also in the public domain, as are those published before March 1989 if the copyright was not registered within five years of the date of publication, and those published before 1964 if the copyright was not renewed 28 years later.[4][5]
This 2019 video from the United States Copyright Office explains the value of a public domain and why copyright matters.
In the United States, copyright at the federal level began when the Constitution, proposed in 1787, took effect on March 4, 1789. Prior to that, several states had enacted copyright laws, beginning with Connecticut in 1783.[6] Creators of works created after the ratification of the Constitution could receive copyright, while works created before the Constitution took effect remain in the public domain with respect to federal copyright. The initial terms were set by the Copyright Act of 1790 with an initial term of fourteen years, and a one time renewal of fourteen years from the date of publication. In 1831, Congress extended the initial term to twenty-eight years, but left the fourteen year renewal in place.
At the start of the 20th century, Congress passed the Copyright Act of 1909 which extended the renewal period to a term of twenty-eight years for a total of fifty-six years. From 1962 through 1974, Congress passed interim extensions that ultimately extended the total term to seventy years, but only for works dating from September 10, 1906 to the December 31, 1918.[7]
In 1976, the system was overhauled with the Copyright Act of 1976, which revised the term to seventy-five years from publication for all works published prior to 1978, and dictated that copyrights expire at the end of the seventy-fifth year rather than from moment of publication. The 1976 Copyright Act also created new distinctions between works for hire/corporate authorship and individual authorship; with individual authorship receiving a term of life plus fifty years after the death of the last surviving author.
From January 1, 1982, to January 1, 1994, published works from 1906 to 1918 entered on a yearly basis following the end of their seventy-five year term. Published works from 1922 entered on January 1, 1998. Later in 1998, Congress passed the Copyright Term Extension Act which further revised the total terms to ninety-five years from publication for corporate authorship, and life plus seventy years for individual authorship. All other nuances of last surviving author remained.
Works began entering the public domain again starting on January 1, 2019 following no further copyright extensions. As of January 1, 2024, all published works from 1928 and before are public domain.
Public domain works in the U.S.
A graph showing the expansion of U.S. copyright law over time (assuming works created 35 years before their authors' death)
Public-domain literature
Public-domain books within the United States include a number of notable titles, many of which are still commonly read and studied as part of the English-language literary canon. Examples include:
Thousands of paintings and photographs are in the public domain in the U.S., including photographs taken by Jacob Riis, Mathew Brady and Alfred Stieglitz.
Sound recordings fixed in a tangible form before February 15, 1972, have generally been covered by common law, or in some cases by anti-piracy statutes enacted in certain states, not by federal copyright law, and the anti-piracy statutes typically have no duration limit. As such, virtually all sound recordings, regardless of age, are presumed to remain under copyright protection in the United States.[8] The 1971 Sound Recordings Act, effective 1972,[9] and the 1976 Copyright Act, effective 1978, provide federal copyright for unpublished and published sound recordings fixed on or after February 15, 1972. Recordings fixed before February 15, 1972, are still covered, to varying degrees, by common law or state statutes.[10][11] Any rights or remedies under state law for sound recordings fixed before February 15, 1972, are not annulled or limited by the 1976 Copyright Act until February 15, 2067.[12] On that date, all sound recordings fixed before February 15, 1972 will enter the public domain in the United States. The extent to which state statutes provide protection is inconsistent and unclear.[13]
The Music Modernization Act was passed on October 11, 2018. The law mandates that recordings published before 1923 expired on January 1, 2022; recordings published between 1923 and 1946 will be protected for 100 years after release; recordings published between 1947 and 1956 will be protected for 110 years; and the protection for all recordings published after 1956 that were fixed prior to February 15, 1972, will terminate on February 15, 2067.
For sound recordings fixed on or after February 15, 1972, the earliest year that any will enter the public domain will be 2043,[14] and not in any substantial number until 2048.[15] Sound recordings fixed and published on or after February 15, 1972, and before 1978 that failed to carry a proper copyright notice on the recording medium or its cover entered the public domain on publication.[16] From 1978 to March 1, 1989, the owners of the copyrights were permitted as long as five years to remedy their omission without losing the copyright.[17] Since March 1, 1989, no copyright notice has been required.[18]
Since the invention of video capture and animation techniques, thousands of films or videos have entered the public domain. Some examples include:
Television series
A number of television series that were released before 1964 and without copyright renewal (such as nearly all of the extant DuMont Television Network archive), were originally recorded before 1989 without a valid copyright notice or are works of the United States government have episodes in the public domain.
Public-domain status of television episodes complicated by derivative-work considerations and disputes about what constitutes "publication" for legal purposes. For example, 16 episodes of The Andy Griffith Show are, because of expired copyright, in the public domain by themselves, but in 2007, CBS was able to claim an indirect copyright on the episodes by asserting that they were derivative works of earlier episodes still under copyright.[20] The 1964 special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was published with an invalid copyright notice[21] but uses copious amounts of copyrighted music and is loosely based on an original story that is still under copyright.
Hundreds of American live-action films are in the public domain because they were never copyrighted or because their copyrights have since expired. These films may be viewed online at websites such as the Internet Archive[22] and can also be downloaded from various websites.[23]
Notable examples of such public-domain films include:
Public domain in copyrighted works in the United States
Congress has restored expired copyrights several times: "After World War I and after World War II, there were special amendments to the Copyright Act to permit for a limited time and under certain conditions the recapture of works that might have escaped into the public domain, principally by aliens of countries with which we had been at war."[26] Works published with notice of copyright or registered in unpublished form in the years 1964 through 1977 automatically had their copyrights renewed for a second term. Works published with notice of copyright or registered in unpublished form on or after January 1, 1923, and prior to January 1, 1964, had to be renewed during the 28th year of their first term of copyright to maintain copyright for a full 95-year term.[27] With the exception of maps, music, and movies, the vast majority of works published in the United States before 1964 were never renewed for a second copyright term.[28]
The claim that "pre-1929 works are in the public domain" is correct only for published works; unpublished works are under federal copyright for at least the life of the author plus 70 years. For a work for hire, the copyright in a work created before 1978, but not theretofore in the public domain or registered for copyright, subsists from January 1, 1978, and endures for a term of 95 years from the year of its first publication, or a term of 120 years from the year of its creation, whichever expires first.[30] If the work was created before 1978 but first published 1978–2002, the federal copyright will not expire before 2047.[31]
Until the Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988, the lack of a proper copyright notice would place an otherwise copyrightable work into the public domain, although for works published between January 1, 1978, and February 28, 1989, this could be prevented by registering the work with the Library of Congress within five years of publication. After March 1, 1989, an author's copyright in a work begins when it is fixed in a tangible form; neither publication nor registration is required, and a lack of a copyright notice does not place the work into the public domain.[32]
On January 1, 2020, published works from 1924 entered the public domain. Among the more notable entries into the public domain in 2020 was George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue", a musical work that the Gershwin estate famously fought to keep in copyright.[36]
Since the public domain began expanding annually again in 2019, the month of January has typically seen a large number of public domain works uploaded to sites such as Project Gutenberg, Standard Ebooks, and Wikimedia Commons. Standard Ebooks usually releases a number of notable newly-public domain books each January 1, and films in the public domain are uploaded to Wikimedia Commons (and linked to their corresponding Wikipedia articles) around the same time.
Sound recordings
Very few sound recordings were in the public domain in the United States prior to 2022. Sound recordings fixed in a tangible form before February 15, 1972, have been generally covered by common law or in some cases by anti-piracy statutes enacted in certain states, not by federal copyright law, and the anti-piracy statutes typically have no duration limit. The 1971 Sound Recordings Act, effective 1972,[9] and the 1976 Copyright Act, effective 1978, provide federal copyright for unpublished and published sound recordings fixed on or after February 15, 1972. Recordings fixed before February 15, 1972, are still covered, to varying degrees, by common law or state statutes.[10][11] Any rights or remedies under state law for sound recordings fixed before February 15, 1972, are not annulled or limited by the 1976 Copyright Act until February 15, 2067.[12] On that date, all sound recordings fixed before February 15, 1972, will go into the public domain in the United States.
For sound recordings fixed on or after February 15, 1972, the earliest year that any will enter the public domain in the U.S. will be 2043,[14] and not in any substantial number until 2048.[15] Sound recordings fixed and published on or after February 15, 1972, and before 1978, which did not carry a proper copyright notice on the recording or its cover entered the public domain on publication.[16] From 1978 to March 1, 1989, the owners of the copyrights had up to five years to remedy this omission without losing the copyright.[17] Since March 1, 1989, no copyright notice has been required.[18]
In September 2018, the US Senate passed the Music Modernization Act, which modified the length of copyright protections for sound recordings and allowed for older sound recordings to enter the public domain prior to the original February 15, 2067 expiration date.[37]
On January 1, 2022, all sound recordings published before 1923 entered the public domain – the first sound recordings to involuntarily lose copyright protection in US history. (Creators have always been free to surrender copyright protection and deed their sound recordings into the public domain, as Tom Lehrer would do later in 2022 after having cancelled his underlying songwriting copyrights in 2020.[38]) Sound recordings published after 1923 have different copyright terms under the Music Modernization Act, as detailed below:
Sound recordings
Date of publication
Copyright length of sound recording
Before 1924
Public domain
1924 to 1946
100 years from publication
1947 to 1956
110 years from publication
1957 to 14 Feb 1972
15 Feb 2067
15 Feb 1972 to 31 Dec 1977
95 years from publication
1978 or later
Life of the Author + 70 years OR 95 years from publication for work for hire/work of corporate authorship.
Public domain
Since
Sound recordings from
Examples
2022
Before 1923
"Every Day Will Be Sunday When The Town Goes Dry," "April Showers"
Note that this only applies to recordings and not lyrics/sheet music. For example, all intellectual property rights relating to the sheet music and lyrics to Rhapsody in Blue expired in 2020, when all written works published in 1924 entered the public domain. The recording itself, however, is protected until January 1, 2025.
Examples
In the United States, the images of Frank Capra's film It's a Wonderful Life (1946) entered into the public domain in 1974, because the copyright holder failed to file a renewal application with the Copyright Office during the 28th year after the film's release or publication. However, in 1993, Republic Pictures utilized the 1990 Supreme Court ruling in Stewart v. Abend to enforce its claim of copyright because the film was a derivative work of a short story that was under a separate, existing copyright, to which Republic owned the film adaptation rights, effectively regaining control of the work in its complete form.[39] Currently, Paramount Pictures owns the film's copyrightable elements.
Charles Chaplin re-edited and scored his 1925 film The Gold Rush for reissue in 1942. Subsequently, the 1925 version fell into the public domain when Chaplin's company failed to renew its copyright in 1953, although the 1942 version is still under US copyright.[40]
The distributor of the cult film Night of the Living Dead, after changing the film's title at the last moment before release in 1968, failed to include a proper copyright notice in the new titles, thereby immediately putting the film into the public domain after its release.[41] This provision of US copyright law was revised with the United States Copyright Act of 1976, which allowed such negligence to be remedied within five years of publication.[42]
Laws may make some types of works and inventions ineligible for monopoly; such works immediately enter the public domain upon publication. Many kinds of mental creations, such as publicized baseball statistics, are never covered by copyright. However, any special layout of baseball statistics, or the like, would be covered by copyright law. For example, while a phone book is not covered by copyright law, any special method of laying out the information would be.
In the past, a work would enter the public domain in the United States if it was released without a copyright notice. This was true prior to March 1, 1989, but is no longer the case. Any work (of certain, enumerated types) now receives copyright as soon as it is fixed in a tangible medium.[43]
Computer Software Rental Amendments Act
There are several references to putting copyrighted work into the public domain. The first reference is actually in a statute passed by Congress, in the Computer Software Rental Amendments Act of 1990 (Public Law 101–650, 104 Stat. 5089 (1990)). Although most of the Act was codified into Title 17 of the United States Code, there is a very interesting provision relating to "public domain shareware" which was not, and is therefore often overlooked.
Sec. 805. Recordation of Shareware
(a) IN GENERAL— The Register of Copyrights is authorized, upon receipt of any document designated as pertaining to computer shareware and the fee prescribed by section 708 of title 17, United States Code, to record the document and return it with a certificate of recordation.
(b) MAINTENANCE OF RECORDS; PUBLICATION OF INFORMATION—The Register of Copyrights is authorized to maintain current, separate records relating to the recordation of documents under subsection (a), and to compile and publish at periodic intervals information relating to such recordations. Such publications shall be offered for sale to the public at prices based on the cost of reproduction and distribution.
(c) DEPOSIT OF COPIES IN LIBRARY OF CONGRESS—In the case of public domain computer shareware, at the election of the person recording a document under subsection (a), 2 complete copies of the best edition (as defined in section 101 of title 17, United States Code) of the computer shareware as embodied in machine-readable form may be deposited for the benefit of the Machine-Readable Collections Reading Room of the Library of Congress.
(d) REGULATIONS—The Register of Copyrights is authorized to establish regulations not inconsistent with law for the administration of the functions of the Register under this section. All regulations established by the Register are subject to the approval of the Librarian of Congress.
One purpose of this legislation appears to be to allow "public domain shareware" to be filed at the Library of Congress, presumably so that the shareware would be more widely disseminated. Therefore, one way to release computer software into the public domain might be to make the filing and pay the $20 fee.[44] This could have the effect of "certifying" that the author intended to release the software into the public domain. It does not seem that registration is necessary to release the software into the public domain, because the law does not state that public-domain status is conferred by registration. Judicial rulings support this conclusion; see below.
By comparing paragraph (a) and (c), one can see that Congress distinguishes "public domain" shareware as a special kind of shareware. Because this law was passed after the Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988, Congress was well aware that newly created computer programs (two years worth, since the Berne Act was passed) would automatically have copyright attached. Therefore, one reasonable inference is that Congress intended that authors of shareware would have the power to release their programs into the public domain. This interpretation is followed by the Copyright Office in 37 C.F.R. § 201.26.[45]
Berne Convention Implementation Act
The Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988 states in section twelve that the Act "does not provide copyright protection for any work that is in the public domain." The congressional committee report explains that this means simply that the Act does not apply retroactively.
Although the only part of the act that does mention "public domain" does not speak to whether authors have the right to dedicate their work to the public domain, the remainder of the committee report does not say that they intended copyright to be an indestructible form of property. Rather the language speaks about getting rid of copyright formalities in order to comply with Berne (non-compliance had become a severe impediment in trade negotiations) and making registration and marking optional, but encouraged. A fair reading is that the Berne Act did not intend to take away author's right to dedicate works to the public domain, which they had (by default) under the 1976 Act.
Section 203 of the Copyright Act
Although there is support in the statutes for allowing work to be dedicated to the public domain, there cannot be an unlimited right to dedicate work to the public domain because of a quirk of U.S. copyright law which grants the author of a work the right to cancel "the exclusive or nonexclusive grant of a transfer or license of copyright or of any right under a copyright" thirty-five years later, unless the work was originally a work for hire.[46]
Case law
Another form of support comes from the case Computer Associates Int'l v. Altai, 982 F.2d 693, which set the standard for determining copyright infringement of computer software. This case discusses the public domain.
(c) Elements Taken from the Public Domain
Closely related to the non-protectability of scenes a faire, is material found in the public domain. Such material is free for the taking and cannot be appropriated by a single author even though it is included in a copyrighted work. ... We see no reason to make an exception to this rule for elements of a computer program that have entered the public domain by virtue of freely accessible program exchanges and the like. See 3 Nimmer Section 13.03 [F]; see also Brown Bag Software, slip op. at 3732 (affirming the district court's finding that "[p]laintiffs may not claim copyright protection of an ... expression that is, if not standard, then commonplace in the computer software industry."). Thus, a court must also filter out this material from the allegedly infringed program before it makes the final inquiry in its substantial similarity analysis.
This decision holds that computer software may enter the public domain through "freely accessible program exchanges and the like", or by becoming "commonplace in the computer industry." Relying only on this decision, it is unclear whether an author can dedicate their work to the public domain simply by labeling it as such, or whether dedication to the public domain requires widespread dissemination.
This could make a distinction in a CyberPatrol-like case, where a software program is released, leading to litigation, and as part of a settlement the author assigns their copyright. If the author has the power to release their work into the public domain, there would be no way for the new owner to stop the circulation of the program. A court may look on an attempt to abuse the public domain in this way with disfavor, particularly if the program has not been widely disseminated. Either way, a fair reading is that an author may choose to release a computer program to the public domain if he can arrange for it to become popular and widely disseminated.
In other cases, courts facing claims of copyright abandonment have borrowed from the law of personal property. In this context, abandonment is the intentional relinquishment of a legal interest as manifested by some overt act. [47]
A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive legal right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educational, or musical form. Copyright is intended to protect the original expression of an idea in the form of a creative work, but not the idea itself. A copyright is subject to limitations based on public interest considerations, such as the fair use doctrine in the United States.
The copyright law of Canada governs the legally enforceable rights to creative and artistic works under the laws of Canada. Canada passed its first colonial copyright statute in 1832 but was subject to imperial copyright law established by Britain until 1921. Current copyright law was established by the Copyright Act of Canada which was first passed in 1921 and substantially amended in 1988, 1997, and 2012. All powers to legislate copyright law are in the jurisdiction of the Parliament of Canada by virtue of section 91(23) of the Constitution Act, 1867.
Perpetual copyright, also known as indefinite copyright, is copyright that lasts indefinitely. Perpetual copyright arises either when a copyright has no finite term from outset, or when a copyright's original finite term is perpetually extended. The first of these two scenarios is highly uncommon, as the current laws of all countries with copyright statutes set a standard limit on the duration, based either on the date of creation/publication, or on the date of the creator's death. Exceptions have sometimes been made, however, for unpublished works. Usually, special legislation is required, granting a perpetual copyright to a specific work.
Public Domain Day (PDD) is an observance of when copyrights expire and works enter into the public domain. This legal transition of copyright works into the public domain usually happens every year on January 1 based on the individual copyright laws of each country.
In the United States copyright law, a copyright notice is a notice of statutorily prescribed form that informs users of the underlying claim to copyright ownership in a published work.
Public domain music is music to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply.
The rule of the shorter term, also called the comparison of terms, is a provision in international copyright treaties. The provision allows that signatory countries can limit the duration of copyright they grant to foreign works under national treatment to no more than the copyright term granted in the country of origin of the work.
The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act – also known as the Copyright Term Extension Act, Sonny Bono Act, or (derisively) the Mickey Mouse Protection Act – extended copyright terms in the United States in 1998. It is one of several acts extending the terms of copyright.
The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. Because no one holds the exclusive rights, anyone can legally use or reference those works without permission.
Under the law of the United Kingdom, a copyright is an intangible property right subsisting in certain qualifying subject matter. Copyright law is governed by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, as amended from time to time. As a result of increasing legal integration and harmonisation throughout the European Union a complete picture of the law can only be acquired through recourse to EU jurisprudence, although this is likely to change by the expiration of the Brexit transition period on 31 December 2020, the UK has left the EU on 31 January 2020. On 12 September 2018, the European Parliament approved new copyright rules to help secure the rights of writers and musicians.
The Copyright Act of 1976 is a United States copyright law and remains the primary basis of copyright law in the United States, as amended by several later enacted copyright provisions. The Act spells out the basic rights of copyright holders, codified the doctrine of "fair use", and for most new copyrights adopted a unitary term based on the date of the author's death rather than the prior scheme of fixed initial and renewal terms. It became Public Law number 94-553 on October 19, 1976, and went into effect on January 1, 1978.
The copyright law of the United States grants monopoly protection for "original works of authorship". With the stated purpose to promote art and culture, copyright law assigns a set of exclusive rights to authors: to make and sell copies of their works, to create derivative works, and to perform or display their works publicly. These exclusive rights are subject to a time and generally expire 70 years after the author's death or 95 years after publication. In the United States, works published before January 1, 1929, are in the public domain.
When a work's copyright expires, it enters the public domain. The following is a list of works that entered the public domain in 2019. Since laws vary globally, the copyright status of some works are not uniform.
When a work's copyright expires, it enters the public domain. The following is a list of creators whose works enter the public domain in 2020. Since laws vary globally, the copyright status of some works is not uniform.
The CLASSICS Act or Compensating Legacy Artists for their Songs, Service, and Important Contributions to Society Act is Title II of the Music Modernization Act and was proposed legislation as H.R. 3301 of the 115th United States Congress to amend title 17 of the United States Code, to provide Federal protection to the digital audio transmission of a sound recording fixed before February 15, 1972, and for other purposes.
When a work's copyright expires, it enters the public domain. The following is a list of creators whose works enter the public domain in 2021. Since laws vary globally, the copyright status of some works are not uniform.
The following is a list of creators whose works enter the public domain on 1 January 2022. When copyright expires in a creative work, it enters the public domain. Since copyright terms vary from country to country, the copyright status of a work may not be the same in all countries.
When a work's copyright expires, it enters the public domain. The following is a list of creators whose works enter the public domain in 2023. Since laws vary globally, the copyright status of some works are not uniform.
When a work's copyright expires, it enters the public domain. The following is a list of creators whose works enter the public domain in 2024. Since laws vary globally, the copyright status of some works are not uniform.
When a work's copyright expires, it enters the public domain. The following is a list of creators whose works enter the public domain in 2025. Since laws vary globally, the copyright status of some works are not uniform.
1 2 Non-U.S. sound recordings fixed before February 15, 1972, are covered under U.S. copyright (for the normal durations) if the country of origin shares an international copyright agreement with the United States, and the work was not published in the U.S. within 30 days of its first publication. Robert Clarida, "Who Owns Pre-1972 Sound Recordings?", The Intellectual Property Strategist, November 13, 2000.
1 2 Sound recordings fixed between February 15, 1972, and December 31, 1972, but not published or registered before 2003, whose authors, not working for hire, died in 1972.
↑ "Tom Lehrer Songs". Tom Lehrer. November 1, 2022. Archived from the original on November 1, 2022. Retrieved December 16, 2022.
↑ James Bates, "Company Town Yule With Less 'Wonderful Life'? Tune In", Los Angeles Times, November 23, 1993, p. D4.
↑ Film Superlist: Motion Pictures in the US Public Domain. Created by Walter E. Hurst; updated edition by D. Richard Baer. Hollywood Film Archive, 1992–94.
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