The first of each year marks Public Domain Day, the day when a new batch of copyrighted creative works enter the public domain. The class of 2025 features literary classics such as William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, and Virginia Woolf’s essay A Room of One’s Own; musical compositions such as Singin’ in the Rain and Tiptoe through the Tulips; works of art including Salvador Dali’s Illumined Pleasures; and the first versions of familiar cartoon characters, including everyone’s favorite spinach-eating sailor.
Celebrate Public Domain Day by learning about the opportunities the public domain provides for the free sharing and adapting of treasured works, and for replicating and preserving lesser-known works, with the resources in this post.
Read moreThis post highlights recent intellectual property cases and resources for further research on intellectual property law.
Read morePublic Domain Day is the yearly celebration of a new group of copyrighted creative works entering the public domain, making them freely accessible to all. Public Domain Day is the perfect opportunity to learn about legal concepts and challenges surrounding intellectual property law and how this evolving area of law affects libraries. The pandemic has increased the demand for access to digital materials as large book publishers merged while library in-person services became limited, resulting in raised tensions between authors, publishers, and libraries.
Read moreBe honest. How many of you have considered, or at least thought about, writing the next great American novel, or perhaps documenting your life and experiences in a memoir? If so, it has probably crossed your mind that you need some way to protect your creative effort from unwanted copying. This is the point where the law of copyright steps in and where confusion surfaces. Attorney Stephen Fishman, a recognized expert in the field of copyright, has created The Copyright Handbook: What Every Writer Needs to Know to help would-be writers navigate this somewhat puzzling area of the law.
Read moreEach New Year, a new batch of creative works enters the public domain as their copyright terms expire and they become free to use, reuse, and share. Public Domain Day is observed each January 1st to commemorate the works that enter the public domain. In 2022, thousands of works first published in 1926 became public domain, including A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh, Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, and Franz Kafka’s The Castle, as well as over 400,000 sound recordings from pre-1923.
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