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An open book lays on a wooden table with a blue background. Musical notes, film, and pages come out of the book.
Credit: Composite by David Rice/U.S. Copyright Office, using licensed Shutterstock images.

Lifecycle of Copyright: 1929 Works in the Public Domain

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The following blog is authored by Alison Hall and Maya Reid, with legal research by Laura Kaiser.

Over the last several years, we have witnessed a new class of creative works entering the public domain in the United States each January 1. This year, a variety of works published in 1929, ranging from motion pictures to music to books, joined others in the public domain. The public domain has important historical and cultural benefits in the lifecycle of copyright.

What is copyright and how is it different from other types of intellectual property?

Copyright is a type of intellectual property (IP) that protects original works of authorship as soon as an author fixes the work in a tangible form of expression. Intellectual property rights protect creations of the mind. This includes copyrightable creative works—but also inventions protected by patents, brands protected by trademarks, and commercially valuable information protected under trade secret law. Unlike some other areas of IP, which require government action to secure protection, copyright protection is automatic—although registration with the Copyright Office confers additional benefits.

Copyright law arises from Article I, section 8 of the Constitution, which grants Congress the power, “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” The Copyright Act describes that the exclusive rights of copyright owners include the right to use and give permission for others to use the work in many ways—making copies of and distributing the work, creating derivative works, and publicly performing or displaying the work. Under the Constitution, Congress may only provide these rights for “limited times.” The first federal copyright law, dating back to 1790, protected registered works for fourteen years with a fourteen-year renewal option. The law has changed over time, and today, the term of copyright protection lasts for the author’s life plus an additional seventy years.

When copyright protection ends, a work enters the public domain, and the exclusive rights granted by copyright no longer exist. This means the work may be reproduced without permission, may be performed or displayed publicly, and may also be used in the creation of new works, such as adaptations and translations. However, even when copyright protection ends and a work is in the public domain, it is important to note that it may still be subject to other protections.[i]

Below are just a few of the historical and cultural works that entered the public domain in 2025.

Literary Works

Life in the post-World War I era influenced much of the literature released in 1929. Themes of loss, anxiety, disillusionment, and social commentary were common in literature in the United States and abroad.

The Magic Island

William Seabrook was a Maryland-born travel writer with a strong interest in the occult. In 1929, he published the book The Magic Island, a work that detailed his experiences witnessing Haitian Vodou practices while in Haiti. It was on this trip that Seabrook claimed to have heard stories of, and ultimately witnessed himself, zombies who had been raised from the dead and worked as servants. The Magic Island is credited with being the first English-language depiction of zombies and starting the pop culture fascination with the undead. In 1932, a movie based on Seabrook’s experiences hit theaters. White Zombie, a horror film that features a voodoo-practicing plantation owner with a crew of zombies, is considered the first feature-length zombie film. The Magic Island was registered with the Copyright Office in January 1929.

The 1929 edition of The Magic Island open to the title page.
Photo by David Rice/U.S. Copyright Office. The full digitized book will be available in the Library’s collections.

A Farewell to Arms

Ernest Hemingway was an acclaimed novelist born in Oak Park, Illinois. In 1929, he published his second novel and first bestseller, A Farewell to Arms. The novel focuses on an American serving in the Italian Army during the first World War who falls in love with a nurse. This war novel was heavily inspired by Hemingway’s own experiences in World War I, during which he served as an ambulance driver in Italy for the Red Cross Motor Corps. After becoming severely injured by shrapnel, Hemingway received treatment at the American Red Cross hospital and fell in love with a nurse there, Agnes von Kurowsky. His feelings for her were unreciprocated, but Hemingway used her nonetheless as the basis for the love interest in his novel. Photographs of Hemingway during his stay at the hospital in Milan, including an image of him with Kurowsky, can be viewed in the Library of Congress’s American National Red Cross photograph collection. A Farewell to Arms was registered with the Copyright Office in September 1929.

1929 edition of A Farewell to Arms sits upright on a table. Other tables with lamps appear in the background.
Photo by David Rice/U.S. Copyright Office. The full digitized book is available in the Library’s collections.

All Quiet on the Western Front

The influential war novel All Quiet on the Western Front, written by German author Erich Maria Remarque, was first published as a serial in Vossische Zeitung magazine in 1928. This novel both granted Remarque a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize and caused him to be a target of Nazi politicians, for which he would ultimately have to flee his home country. All Quiet on the Western Front is set during World War I in Germany and was both commended and controversial for its realistic depiction of war.

Australian-born Arthur Wesley Wheen translated the novel into English, and publisher Little, Brown, and Company, Boston registered the translation with the Copyright Office on April 19, 1929. Generally, when a writer authorizes a translation of their work, the writer retains the copyright to the original work, and the translator owns the copyright in the translated, derivative work. However, if the translation was commissioned as a work made for hire, the commissioning party is the author and copyright owner, as in this case.

All Quiet on the Western Front has been adapted to film three times. Just a year after the novel’s publication, a film adaptation was released to critical acclaim. The 1930 film won two Academy Awards and was inducted into the National Film Registry in 1990. A 1979 made-for-TV movie adaptation received both an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award. A third film adaptation was released in 2022 and went on to receive four Academy Awards.

The 1929 edition of All Quiet on the Western Front sits upright on a table. Other tables with lamps appear in the background.
Caption: Photo by David Rice/U.S. Copyright Office. The full digitized book will be available in the Library’s collections.

A Room of One’s Own

A Room of One’s Own is an extended essay in which Virginia Woolf argues, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write.” Woolf was an experimental novelist and essayist from London, England, who surrounded herself with the influential literary circle known as the Bloomsbury Group. A Room of One’s Own is based on lectures Woolf presented at women’s colleges at the University of Cambridge.

Woolf and her husband, Leonard Woolf, founded the Hogarth Press publishing company and ran the press from within their home. Through this press, they published many of Woolf’s works and the works of the Bloomsbury Group. A Room of One’s Own was registered with the Copyright Office in October 1929, with the Hogarth Press listed as one of the publishers. The Hogarth Press continues on as an imprint of Penguin Random House.

The 1929 edition of A Room of One's Own open to the title page.
Caption: Photo by David Rice/U.S. Copyright Office. The full digitized book is available in the Library’s collections.

Motion Pictures

In 1929, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave out its first awards. These films weren’t released in time to be considered for awards that year, but they were among the first made in the Academy Awards era, when sound films were becoming more and more popular.

The Cocoanuts

The Marx Brothers released their first feature-length film in 1929, The Cocoanuts. Paramount famous Lasky corp. registered the film with the Copyright Office in August 1929. The film featured music from Irving Berlin, but they’re considered some of his least popular songs—none of the music became a hit. Four of the Marx Brothers star in this film: Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo. It’s also the first of seven Marx Brothers films featuring Margaret Dumont. Groucho plays “Mr. Hammer,” the owner and manager of a large Florida hotel. The plot centers on money-making schemes, thieves, and a love story, and includes song and dance numbers typical of the time. The Cocoanuts established the common character types the Marx Brothers would carry throughout their film careers.

Two pink card catalog cards show the typed registration information for the 1929 movie The Cocoanuts.
The card catalog registration application card for The Cocoanuts. The full digitized film will be available in the Library’s collections.

Hallelujah

Hallelujah, registered with the Copyright Office in September 1929 by King Vidor, MGM, was one of the first films with an all-African American cast. The Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry in 2008. The Film Registry’s website notes that the film “was a surprising gamble by normally conservative MGM, allowed chiefly because director King Vidor deferred his salary and MGM had proved slow to convert from silent to sound films.” The film tells the story of a cotton sharecropper played by Daniel L. Haynes, beginning with him losing his year’s earnings, his brother, and his freedom, and then it follows him through his relationship with dancer Chick, played by Nina Mae McKinney. Vidor earned an Academy Award nomination for his directorial work, having to shoot silent film of the mass-river-baptism and swamp-murder scenes and then synchronizing the dialogue and music.

Hallelujah was restored in 2021 by the Library of Congress and The Film Foundation with grant funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation. The Library has a long-established collaboration with Martin Scorsese’s The Film Foundation (TFF) to preserve films in the Library’s Moving Image Collection at the Library’s National Audio-Visual Conservation Center. TFF collaborates with other moving image archival institutions around the world preserving culturally and historically significant films, including those in the public domain.

Black and white title card from the movie Hallelujah. The words appear in an oval and the MGM lion appears at the bottom.
Caption: Image provided in collaboration with the Library of Congress Moving Image Section.

On With the Show!

On With the Show! was the first talking all-color feature-length film and the second color film released by Warner Brothers. Originally called Broadway or Bust, Warner Brothers registered the film with the Copyright Office in June 1929. Written by Robert Lord, the film tells the story of a Broadway musical review that has run out of money to pay its expenses. The show’s backer can’t supply any more money, so Jerry, the manager, played by Sam Hardy, has to beg his father for his life savings so the show can continue. But then the box office is robbed and the star refuses to perform without being paid. Kitty, played by Sally O’Neil, goes on in her place and saves the show. The film featured music by Harry Akst and Grant Clarke. One song, “Am I Blue?,” was also featured in three other films in 1929.

Black and white movie picture with words On with the Show. Images of people in the movie appear in the background.
Image provided in collaboration with the Library of Congress Moving Image Section. The full digitized film will be available in the Library’s collections

Musical Works

While jazz and the blues were the most popular musical styles of 1929, ukulele music was gaining popularity. African American jazz musicians continued to gain popularity as well, especially in the New York area, where the distinctive style of jazz piano playing known as “stride” was popular.

“Ain’t Misbehavin’ ”

Thomas “Fats” Weller was a master of the stride style. He wrote one of the top songs of 1929, “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” as the opening number for the Hot Chocolates musical review at Connie’s Inn in Harlem. The review then moved to Broadway, opening at the Hudson Theatre. The Library of Congress added the song to the National Sound Recording Registry in 2004. The Registry Entry notes that, in the words of Waller’s biographer Paul S. Machlin, the work “would become one of the most recorded songs of the first half of the twentieth century, with a half dozen hit recordings in the first six months alone. Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Nat King Cole, and Teddy Wilson are among the more than 300 jazz and popular singers to record their versions in the years since.”

Sheet music cover for Ain't Misbehavin' with orange pentagon in the middle with drawings of dancers and a man playing the saxaphone.
Image provided in collaboration with the Library of Congress Reader Services team. The full digitized sheet music will be available in the Library’s collections.

“Tip-Toe through the Tulips with Me”

Well-known ukulele song “Tip-Toe through the Tulips with Me” became a novelty hit in 1968 when Tiny Tim first sang it on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, but it’s actually a song from 1929 written by Al Dubin and Joe Burke. They first registered the song with the Copyright Office in May 1929. The original, recorded by Nick Lucas, was featured in the film Gold Diggers of Broadway.

Sheet music cover for Tiptoe through the Tulips with Me featuring photos of the cast of The Gold Diggers of Broadway over yellow sunbeams.
Image provided in collaboration with the Library of Congress Reader Services team. The full digitized sheet music will be available in the Library’s collections.

“Singin’ in the Rain”

“Singin’ in the Rain” by Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown, is probably most famous as the title song of the 1952 film. However, the song came out almost twenty-five years before the movie and appeared in many other musicals and films both before and after, starting with Doris Eaton Travis’s stage version in The Hollywood Music Box Revue in 1929. The song was registered with the Copyright Office in May of that year. Three singers had hits with the song in 1929 alone: Cliff Edwards, Earl Burtnett, and Gus Amheim, with Edwards having the most success.

Sheet music cover of Singing' in the Rain featuring images in stars of the cast of Hollywood Review of 1929.
Image provided in collaboration with the Library of Congress Reader Services team. The full digitized sheet music will be available in the Library’s collections.

 

[i] For more information about researching the copyright status of any work, access our website. The resources How to Investigate the Copyright Status of a Work (Circular 22) and How to Obtain Permission (Circular 16A) may be particularly helpful. To learn more about patents, trademarks, and trade secrets, visit the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s website. For legal advice, please contact an attorney.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments (2)

  1. Thank you very much for this wonderfully opportunity.

  2. The timing is amazingly ironic, for All Is Quiet On The Western Front. It seems to be a forecast for America.

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