Every year on January 1, a new class of creative works enters the public domain in the United States. This year, a variety of works published in 1928, 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. Here we highlight a selection of works entering the public domain in 2024.
This summer, the Copyright Office reached a new milestone in our modernization efforts: one million card catalog records have been digitized with searchable metadata and added to the Office’s Copyright Public Records System (CPRS) pilot. Learn more about CPRS, the Office’s digitization efforts, and historical registration application cards in this blog post.
Earlier this year, on January 1, new group of creative works entered the public domain in the United States. Learn more about some of the works published in 1927 that anyone can now use without the copyright owner’s permission.
This year, we are celebrating Native American Heritage Month and Native American Heritage Day with a blog series called Celebrating the Firsts: Shining a Light on Trailblazing Artwork by Native Artists. In this four-part series, we are recognizing five indigenous creators who have participated in our copyright system and enriched our culture. Join us on a …
Do you hear the people sing, singing the songs inspired by the public domain? Broadways musicals have a long tradition of pulling inspiration from the plays, short stories, operas, and more in the public domain. Let's take a look at five musicals and what inspired them.
On January 1, 2022, thousands of works published in 1926 entered the public domain. Explore some of the notable additions from A. A. Milne, Langston Hughes, Willa Cather, and more.
On January 1, thousands of 1924 works entered the public domain. An important part of the copyright lifecycle, you can use works in the public domain freely to inspire your own creativity. Explore some of the notable additions from George and Ira Gershwin, Buster Keaton, W. E. B. Du Bois, and more.
New Year’s Day 2019 was a landmark for American copyright law. For the first time in twenty years, published works of expression—including books, music, and films—started moving out of copyright protection and into the public domain. U.S. copyright law gives creators several exclusive rights over their creative and original works. These include, for example, the …
