Public Domain Day 2026 | Duke University School of Law

January 1, 2026 is Public Domain Day: Works from 1930 are open to all, as are sound recordings from 1925!

By Jennifer Jenkins and James Boyle[1]
CC BY 4.0
Please note that this site is only about US law; the copyright terms in other countries are different.[2]

On January 1, 2026, thousands of copyrighted works from 1930 enter the US public domain, along with sound recordings from 1925. They will be free for all to copy, share, and build upon.[3] The literary highlights range from William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying to Agatha Christie’s The Murder at the Vicarage and the first four Nancy Drew novels. From cartoons and comic strips, the characters Betty Boop, Pluto (originally named Rover), and Blondie and Dagwood made their first appearances. Films from the year featured Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, the Marx Brothers, and John Wayne in his first leading role. Among the public domain compositions are I Got Rhythm, Georgia on My Mind, and Dream a Little Dream of Me. We are also celebrating paintings from Piet Mondrian and Paul Klee. Below you can find lists of some of the most notable books, characters, comics, and cartoons, films, songs, sound recordings, and art entering the public domain.[4] After each of them, we have provided an analysis of their significance. At the end of the article, we explain:

Why all of this matters
How do copyright and trademark law apply to characters?
What is the impact of the long copyright term?
What are the basic rules for determining whether something is public domain?
Conclusion

BOOKS

CHARACTERS, COMICS, CARTOONS

FILMS

MUSICAL COMPOSITIONS

SOUND RECORDINGS

ART

Keep reading to learn more about the public domain! You can use the links below to jump to the answers.

Why celebrate the public domain?
How do copyright and trademark law apply to characters?
What is the impact of the long copyright term?
What are the basic rules for determining whether something is public domain?
Conclusion

WHY CELEBRATE THE PUBLIC DOMAIN

When works go into the public domain, they can legally be shared, without permission or fee. Community theaters can screen the films. Youth orchestras can perform the music publicly, without paying licensing fees. Online repositories such as the Internet Archive, HathiTrust, Google Books, and the New York Public Library can make works fully available online. This helps enable both access to and preservation of cultural materials that might otherwise be lost to history. 1930 was a long time ago and the vast majority of works from that year are not commercially available. You couldn’t buy them, or even find them, if you wanted. When they enter the public domain in 2026, anyone can rescue them from obscurity and make them available, where we can all discover, enjoy, and breathe new life into them.

The public domain is also a wellspring for creativity. You could think of it as the yin to copyright’s yang. Copyright law gives authors important rights that encourage creativity and distribution—this is a very good thing. But the United States Constitution requires that those rights last only for a “limited time,” so that when they expire, works go into the public domain, where future authors can legally build on the past—reimagining the books, making them into films, adapting the songs and movies. That’s a good thing too! It is part of copyright’s ecosystem. The point of copyright is to promote creativity, and the public domain plays a central role in doing so.

The Supreme Court explained: “The copyright term is limited so that the public will not be permanently deprived of the fruits of an artist’s labors.” To quote Justice Joseph Story, this benefits the public by “admitting the people at large, after a short interval, to the full possession and enjoyment of all writings . . . without restraint.”

How does the public domain feed creativity? Here are just a few current illustrations. In 2025 you may have enjoyed Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, derived from Mary Shelley’s novel, or Wicked: For Good, derived from L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Perhaps you are looking forward to Christopher Nolan’s forthcoming epic IMAX version of The Odyssey, Wuthering Heights starring Margot Robbie as Catherine Earnshaw, or Lear Rex, a new version of King Lear starring Al Pacino as Lear. The Great Gatsby entered the public domain in 2021 and has already spawned a number of creative reworkings. 2025 saw others join them. We had The Gatsby Gambit, The Great Mann, Local Heavens, and Mrs. Wilson's Affair: A Great Gatsby Retelling. Clearly, this is a public domain work on which today's novelists have been feasting. Shakespeare, Dickens, and Austen continue to spawn adaptations too, including a reimagining of Hamlet in present-day London, A Far Better Thing (A Tale of Two Cities with fairy changelings), and The Season of Dragons (Pride and Prejudice and dragons). We haven't yet read it, but very much hope it contains the line, "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single dragon in possession of a good hoard of treasure, must be in want of a wife." 

The works we are celebrating from 1930 also illustrate how the public domain nurtures creativity. Once again, a fine exemplar is Disney, whose beloved works, from Snow White and Cinderella to The Jungle Book and Sleeping Beauty, have consistently built upon the public domain. That was as true in 1930 as it is today. The Mickey Mouse cartoons from 1930 made ingenious reuse of public domain music. Here are some of the public domain songs from these works: Morning, Night and Noon in Vienna by Franz von Suppé (1844), the William Tell Overture by Gioachino Rossini (1829), Orphée aux Enfers by Jacques Offenbach (1858), A Hunting We Will Go by Thomas Arne (1777), Oh Susanna and Old Folks at Home/Swanee River by Stephen Foster (1848, 1851), The Farmer in the Dell (1820s) and Pop Goes the Weasel (1850s) (traditionals), and a tune known as the Snake Charmer Song (1840s). All of these compositions date from before 1880, when the maximum copyright term was 42 years, and could be freely used in 1930 animations.

Sometimes people worry that entry into the public domain could mean the desecration of a beloved character or plot. Yes, inevitably there will be those who capitalize on public domain status to make deliberately shocking content—the slasher movie based on Winnie the Pooh comes to mind, or the low-budget horror films featuring Mickey Mouse. Works like that may even generate outrage—that is their whole marketing plan! But will they be remembered? We have always been able to make slasher or porn versions of Shakespeare, yet I am guessing that the Shakespearean adaptations you remember are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (from Hamlet, RIP Tom Stoppard), West Side Story (from Romeo and Juliet), Forbidden Planet (from The Tempest), or 10 Things I Hate About You (from The Taming of the Shrew). From the serious to the whimsical, these are public domain reuses with more enduring appeal. Far from dimming the luster of the original works, they have allowed their legacy to live on. The best reason not to care about the merely shocking use of public domain works, without an underlying artistic point, is that they tend not to stand the test of time. 

This point is true far beyond Shakespeare. Think of all the other films, cartoons, books, plays, musicals, video games, songs, and other works based on Greek mythology, on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or on the works of Austen and Dickens. The Odyssey inspired not only the upcoming Christopher Nolan epic and the title of As I Lay Dying, but also centuries of other remakes—The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Ulysses, and the Coen brothers’ O Brother Where Art Thou, to name just a few.

Note that the public domain extends beyond works whose copyrights have expired. Some material is born in the public domain. Ideas, facts, and raw data can never be copyrighted. The public domain also includes official works of the US government such as legislation, legal opinions, and even NASA images. The images from the James Webb telescope, the NASA collections NASA on The Commons (flickr) and NASA image and video library, the famous “Earthrise” photograph taken by astronaut William Anders, and the Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection (a pictorial record of American life from 1935-1944 that includes Dorothea Lange's powerful photograph "Migrant Mother," one of the enduring images of the Great Depression) are all copyright-free. Another category of public domain material consists of works that creators choose to dedicate to the public domain, and many have done so using Creative Commons’ CC0 tool.

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HOW DO COPYRIGHT AND TRADEMARK LAW APPLY TO CHARACTERS?

When Mickey Mouse 1.0 went into the public domain in 2024, he joined a host of other public domain characters—Winnie-the-Pooh, Sherlock Holmes, Snow White, Cinderella, Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, Robin Hood, Santa Claus, and the Wonderful Wizard of Oz characters, to name a few. This year, we get the first versions of Betty Boop and Pluto (originally named Rover) and new iterations of Mickey and Minnie Mouse. Looking ahead, an exciting new cast of characters will become public domain in the coming years: the initial appearance of Goofy in 2028 (originally named Dippy Dawg), Donald Duck in 2030, Superman in 2034, Batman in 2035, Tom and Jerry and Bugs Bunny in 2036, and Wonder Woman in 2037. 

Long-running characters such as Betty Boop and Mickey Mouse are subject to both expired and enduring rights. This creates a fascinating checkerboard of material that is free and still owned. The overall result is a layered mosaic of public domain and copyrighted character attributes. Here is a summary, with the legal rules spelled out in more detail afterward and applied to Betty Boop. 

Beginning with Mickey Mouse as a concrete example, dozens of iterations of the mouse fall into each of the categories above. In the top left quadrant, we will have 24 Mickey cartoons (from 1928-1930) and 6 comic strips (1930) that have entered the public domain due to copyright expiration after the full term. At the top right, there are also non-renewed cartoons and over a thousand additional comic strips just from 1930-1935 that appear to be public domain due to non-renewal. And in the bottom row, there are decades of still-copyrighted works, as well as continuing trademark rights for the use of Mickey’s image on various Disney products.

The non-renewed works in the top right quadrant present an additional legal twist. The only aspects that became public domain upon non-renewal were their new features, not material derived from earlier works that remained in-copyright. The chronology of owned and free in such works is inverted. The new is free; the old may be subject to copyright.

Here is how this nuance plays out in one Mickey story without a renewed copyright—the 1934 tale of Rumplewatt the Giant. This story introduces a gnome village from which the titular giant steals a golden goose. After Mickey defeats the giant, the butterfly who initially flew him to the castle morphs into Princess Minnie. As a reward for his valiance, she agrees to marry Mickey. So far as we can tell, these elements were newly introduced in the 1934 comic. If this is correct, they are in the public domain due to non-renewal.

At the same time, Rumplewatt the Giant derived many of its elements from the still-copyrighted cartoon Giantland (1933). These include a sequence where Mickey hides in a sugar-cube jar and ends up in the giant’s coffee cup, and a bit where Mickey uses pepper to make the giant sneeze. Assuming these were original to Giantland, they are still copyrighted. Even though they reappear in the non-renewed comic, they are not in the public domain because they originated in a work that is still under copyright. Finally, both works share basic “ideas” that are uncopyrightable and were always in the public domain—these include the generic “hero fights a giant and defeats him” plot line.

BETTY BOOP 

Betty Boop provides another illustration. As Betty Boop 1.0 enters the public domain, this is an opportunity to celebrate and appreciate Max and Dave Fleischers’ unparalleled artistry and pioneering animation. While Fleischer Studios may not be as well-known to the general public as Disney, perhaps they should be.

We know that Boop’s initial appearances from 1930 are public domain in 2026. There are also dozens of post-1930 Betty Boop cartoons that have long been public domain due to non-renewal. And there are many still-copyrighted works featuring Boop, plus trademark rights over her name and depiction for certain products.

Fleischer Studios has posted a statement called “Fact Check 2026: Is Betty Boop in the Public Domain?". It begins with "this year Betty Boop appeared on a number of [public domain] lists, claiming that she will enter the public domain on January 1, 2026, which is actually not true" and elaborates:

While the copyright in the ‘Dizzy Dishes’ cartoon may fall into the public domain in 2026, this does not affect Fleischer Studios’ copyright in the fully developed BETTY BOOP character Fleischer Studios created in subsequent cartoons and other uses and continues to use today. Fleischer Studios’ copyright in that character will therefore remain in force for some years to come, as will Fleischer Studios’ copyrights in the many subsequently revised and modern versions of the BETTY BOOP character and related elements. Equally important, the BETTY BOOP name and various related character designs are well-known and valuable Fleischer Studios trademarks.

This is interesting because while Fleischer Studios does own continuing trademark rights over Betty Boop (discussed below), its claim to copyright over the fully developed character is less clear. In fact, in 2011, an appeals court definitively held that Fleischer did not own the copyright in the Boop character.[14] The original Fleischer Studios had gone out of business and sold off its rights in the 1940s. The current Fleischer Studios, “a distinct and separate entity,” had later tried to buy back those rights. The only issue before the court was whether Fleischer owned the familiar Boop character. The court ruled that, because “the chain of title is broken,” it did not. (Beside the text you can see, from the court exhibits, two versions of Boop that Fleischer did not then own. As you can see, they are more “modern” than the 1930 Boop with her subtle dog ears.) Perhaps Fleischer has since reacquired some of those rights, or perhaps they only have the rights over newly added features from the “subsequent cartoons and other uses” they mention. In the latter case, those rights would be narrow and would not extend to the underlying Boop character at issue in the 2011 decision. One thing is clear: regardless of who owns the later versions of the character, the original Betty Boop character from 1930 is in the public domain.

If your head is spinning from all the complexities involved here, congratulations! You are in good company. This is another reason why copyright expiration is so important: It brings clarity. There can be multiple separate copyrights implicated in a single creative work – over characters, audiovisual content, music, and so on. During a copyright term that lasts almost 100 years, those multiple rights may have changed hands many times and may no longer be owned by a single entity, or indeed by any entity we can identify. It can be incredibly difficult to figure out who owns what. When entire works become public domain, they are free for reuse without having to untangle this web of ownership.

Thankfully, now that Betty Boop 1.0 is public domain, the ownership and chain of title questions are immaterial. She, at least, is copyright-free. That brings us to another set of questions: What features of the newer, copyrighted Boop characters are still subject to exclusive ownership, and what is free to the public? Expanding on the checkerboard above, here are more specifics about the legal rules, and how they apply to Betty Boop.

EXPIRED AND SUBSISTING COPYRIGHTS

We begin with the left column on the checkboard above. When the copyright expires over a creative work, the characters within that work enter the public domain, and you can use them in new works without permission or fee. What if those characters also appear in more recent works that remain copyrighted?

First, under US copyright law, anyone is free to use characters as they appeared in public domain works. If those characters recur in later works that are still under copyright, the rights only extend to the newly added material in those works, not the underlying material from the public domain works—that content remains freely available.

Second, with newer versions of characters, copyright only extends to those new features that qualify for such protection. The features must be “original, creative expression,” meaning that they were independently created (as opposed to copied from somewhere else) and possess at least a modicum of creativity. Mere “ideas” such as generic character traits are not copyrightable. Nor are “merely trivial” or “minuscule” variations added to the original characters. It is not enough for the new material to be different; it has to meet copyright’s threshold requirements for protectability. In addition, using commonplace elements that have become standard or indispensable (copyright law calls these “scènes à faire”) is not infringement.[15] Finally, if your use qualifies as “fair use,” for example if you make a scathing parody that significantly transforms the original work, the copyright owner has no right to stop you.

From what we have said so far, you can see that even when a work is still under copyright, the rightsholder’s control is not absolute. Here is a serendipitous example. In Nichols v. Universal (1930), the author of the play Abie’s Irish Rose (mentioned above as part of the Marx Brothers’ pun) sued the producers of a popular movie for copyright infringement, claiming appropriation of her characters and plot. The judge rejected this claim, invoking as an example Shakespeare’s Sir Toby Belch from Twelfth Night, the source of W. Somerset Maugham’s Cakes and Ale title highlighted earlier. The judge wrote:

If Twelfth Night were copyrighted, it is quite possible that a second comer might so closely imitate Sir Toby Belch or Malvolio as to infringe, but it would not be enough that for one of his characters he cast a riotous knight who kept wassail to the discomfort of the household, or a vain and foppish steward who became amorous of his mistress. These would be no more than Shakespeare’s “ideas” in the play, as little capable of monopoly as Einstein’s Doctrine of Relativity, or Darwin’s theory of the Origin of Species.

Applying this to Abie’s Irish Rose, the judge explained why copying two lovers from the play would not be infringement: “The lovers are so faintly indicated as to be no more than stage properties. They are loving and fertile; that is really all that can be said of them, and anyone else is quite within his rights if he puts loving and fertile lovers in a play of his own, wherever he gets the cue.”

How do these legal rules apply to Betty Boop? BOOP! the Musical was made when the character was still under copyright. Permission needed to be obtained. What if you wanted to make your own different Betty Boop musical in 2026, now that Boop 1.0 is in the public domain?

All of Boop’s features from the 1930 cartoons are public domain in 2026. In her first appearance in Dizzy Dishes, she has the familiar flapper girl appearance and dance moves, and sings variations of “Boop Oop a Doop” to the besotted Bimbo character.

 That Betty Boop is in the public domain, along with the lyrics, plot, and incredible animation. So are the Boops from other 1930 cartoons (to the left, Barnacle Bill and Mysterious Mose). However, those are not the only parts of the character in the public domain. Some of her features were not copyrightable from the beginning, because they were copied from elsewhere. Her general appearance and “Boop Oop A Doop” catchphrase were inspired by the Jazz Age flapper girl archetype, as embodied by celebrities such as Helen Kane.[16] It was the way those came together into a captivating new character that was copyrighted and is now entering the public domain.

Here is how Betty Boop developed over time, from Fleischer Studios' "Becoming Betty Boop" website.

What features of newer Betty Boops are copyrightable? While copyright still covers the overall post-1930 depictions of Boop, it does not extend to unoriginal, “merely trivial,” or stereotypical modifications of Boop 1.0, such as replacing the dog ears with human ones, dressing her in standard attire for a cabaret performer or homemaker, adding a Rosie the Riveter bandana, or modulating her voice to reflect newer singing styles.

We went through this same process two years ago with Mickey Mouse. Mickey 1.0 did not have red shorts or speak in a high-pitched voice; those traits were added in later, still-copyrighted works. When the original Mickey became public domain, we were asked by many reporters whether creators could color his shorts red or have him talk in a falsetto. Are those variations, standing alone, copyrightable? Does choosing a single, bright, primary color for an article of clothing, or giving an animated mouse a squeaky voice (given that mice actually squeak), meet the copyrightability threshold? We would say no, but reasonable people could disagree on exactly where the line is to be drawn.

Let us be clear: None of this detracts from the astounding creativity in the Fleischer cartoons—they are some of the most innovative cartoons we have ever seen! The later works contain a wealth of copyright-eligible material such as plot lines, dialogue, and new characters. But with any creative work – as the quote about Twelfth Night demonstrates – there are also uncopyrightable building blocks that remain free for future creators. The challenge is to separate the copyrightable wheat from the uncopyrightable chaff.

NON-RENEWED COPYRIGHTS

We now turn to the top right quadrant in the checkerboard—the plot thickens when we add works that are also in the public domain due to non-renewal. Under early copyright law, copyrights lapsed after 28 years if they were not renewed. Dozens of post-1930 Betty Boop cartoons, including Ker-Choo (1932) and Poor Cinderella (1934), did not have renewals.[17] The newly added material in these animations is also in the public domain. As mentioned earlier, however, the material derived from still-copyrighted Boop animations is not.[18]

To sum up the copyright story so far: in 2026, the underlying Betty Boop character goes into the public domain. She is joined there by the attributes, plot lines, and dialogue that were first introduced in those later cartoons without renewed copyrights, as well as the uncopyrightable attributes of her later instantiations.

WHAT IF THE CHARACTER IS NO LONGER COPYRIGHTED, BUT ITS NAME OR IMAGE IS STILL SUBJECT TO TRADEMARK RIGHTS?

We finish with the bottom right quadrant: trademarks. You may encounter claims that even though Betty Boop 1.0 is copyright-free in 2026, you still cannot use the character in new creative works because it is trademarked by Fleischer Studios. But this is not what the law actually says. While Fleischer’s trademark rights over Betty Boop are unaffected by her entry into the copyright public domain, those rights are limited. Trademark law only prohibits the use of a trademarked character if doing so “is likely to cause confusion, or to cause mistake, or to deceive” consumers about the source or sponsorship of a new product.[19] Here is a brief summary of the relevant law.

• Trademark rights are designed to prevent consumer confusion in the marketplace. They are not supposed to interfere with artistic expression that doesn’t create such confusion. Trademark law does not prevent you from using a public domain character’s name or image in a new creative work so long as consumers are not likely to be misled into thinking that your work is produced or sponsored by the trademark holder. In addition, the law has special rules that allow creators to use other people’s trademarks in artistic works without liability.[20]
• Trademarks do not override copyright law.The Supreme Court has made clear that trademark rights cannot be used to block the freedoms that the expiration of copyright allows, such as using a public domain character in a book or movie.[21]
• → Therefore, trademark rights do not prevent you from using the 1930 Betty Boop character in a new creative work unless consumers will be confused into thinking it is a Fleischer-sponsored product.

That is the précis; here is the expanded version for those who are interested. Copyrights and trademarks are different. Copyrights cover creative works and prevent people from copying and adapting them without permission, with the goal of providing economic incentives to create and distribute cultural material. The US Constitution requires that these rights expire after a “limited time,” so that the public and future creators can have unfettered access to creative works.

Trademarks cover words, logos, images, and other signifiers that serve as brands identifying the source of a product. The goal is to minimize consumer confusion in the marketplace. Nike can prevent other producers of athletic apparel from putting “Nike” or a swoosh on their merchandise so that when purchasers see those indicators, they know they are getting a Nike product.

Unlike copyrights, trademarks do not automatically expire. They can last as long as a mark is still being “used in commerce.” While trademarks can outlast copyrights, however, the rights themselves are more circumscribed. It is only trademark infringement if an unauthorized use is likely to create consumer confusion about a product’s source or sponsorship. Non-confusing uses are not prohibited, and there are a variety of legal safeguards for uses of trademarks in connection with expressive works such as films, books, and songs.

Sometimes copyrights and trademarks overlap. A character such as Betty Boop might be covered both by copyright law (as a creative work) and trademark law (as an indicator of product-source). What happens when the copyright expires and the trademark is ongoing? In a unanimous opinion, the Supreme Court made clear that trademarks cannot be used to make an end run around copyright law because this would “create a species of mutant copyright law that limits the public’s federal right to copy and to use expired copyrights.”

“We have been careful to caution against misuse or overextension of trademark and related protections into areas traditionally occupied by . . . copyright.” Dastar v. Twentieth Century Fox (Supreme Court 2003)

In other words, trademark rights cannot be used to block the freedoms that the expiration of copyright allows, such as using a public domain character in a new creative work. Along the same lines, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals explained that when a work enters the public domain “[w]e all own it now,” and trademark law “cannot be used to circumvent copyright law. If material covered by copyright law has passed into the public domain, it cannot then be protected by the Lanham Act [the federal trademark statute] without rendering the Copyright Act a nullity.”[22]

Therefore, you can use a character’s name or image in a new creative work so long as consumers do not think that your work is produced or sponsored by the trademark holder. Those who tell you otherwise are mistaken.[23] One way to help dispel potential confusion is to make clear the actual source of the work – you or your company – on the title screen or cover, along with a prominent disclaimer indicating that your work is not produced, sponsored, endorsed, licensed, or approved by the trademark owner.

Fleischer owns trademark rights to the words “Betty Boop” and “Boop” for products such as live musical theater performances and clothing. It also has trademarks over Betty Boop designs such as the one depicted here for a range of merchandise including jewelry, wallets, back packs, drinking glasses, plastic water bottles, clothing, and dolls. (As noted by the Ninth Circuit appeals court in the case rejecting Fleischer’s copyright claim, it turns out that Boop merchandise is extremely popular, even appearing in the most surprising locations: “This merchandise has reached such a high level of popularity that even drug dealers have been known to use it. See United States v. Lakoskey, 462 F.3d 965, 971 (8th Cir. 2006) (‘A search warrant was issued, and the package was opened pursuant to that warrant on January 26, 2004. The package contained a large ceramic Betty Boop doll, with four concealed, separately wrapped plastic bundles of high-purity-level methamphetamine inside’).”)

Fleischer’s trademark rights are for uses of “Betty Boop,” “Boop,” and her image, but only in connection with particular specified products. Fleischer does not own the simple word “Boop,” unconnected to Betty. Other companies have federally registered “Boop” as a trademark for coffee mugs and pet stores. Trademarks do not convey ownership of a word. “Popeye” the sailor cartoons coexist happily with the unconnected “Popeyes” chicken and biscuits. Dove soap does not infringe Dove chocolate. Delta faucets and Delta airlines legally use the same brand name for different goods and services.

The result of all of these points is that Fleischer Studios cannot use trademark law to interfere with the production of a new creative work featuring the Betty Boop 1.0 character when it is clear that the new work is not a Fleischer-sponsored production.

Here it is important to distinguish between different uses of the Boop character. Certainly, there would be a risk of consumer confusion if you use Betty Boop as a brand identifier on the kind of merchandise Fleischer sells—jewelry, back packs, water bottles, dolls. Trademark law does protect Fleischer against that risk.

Contrast these uses with simply putting the Boop character in a new artistic work. This is exactly what copyright expiration is intended to allow. Were trademark law to prevent this, then trademark rights would be leveraged to obtain the effective equivalent of a perpetual copyright—precisely what the Supreme Court said we cannot do. You can also use the trademarked terms “Betty Boop” or “Boop” in connection with the new work featuring that character. As one court explained:

“When a public domain work is copied, along with its title, there is little likelihood of confusion when even the most minimal steps are taken to distinguish the publisher of the original from that of the copy. The public is receiving just what it believes it is receiving—the work with which the title has become associated. The public is not only unharmed, it is unconfused.”[24]

If courts have delineated the line between copyright and trademark, why is there so little clarity in this area? Sadly, companies sometimes claim to have more expansive rights than they actually do, capitalizing on fear, uncertainty, and doubt to collect royalties and licensing fees to which they are not legally entitled. This is deeply regrettable. It interferes with the rights of everyone from the small community theater trying to screen a public domain movie, and being told they still have to pay licensing fees, to new creators trying to make a new work from a public domain character but facing baseless threats that they are infringing. In the process, it fundamentally misstates the law in a way that confuses the public.

When such overbroad claims have actually gone to court, they have been dismissed, sometimes harshly. In 2023 we covered the Sherlock Holmes saga. The ingenious detective and his faithful sidekick Dr. Watson had been in the public domain for a long time. But that did not stop Conan Doyle Estate Ltd. from demanding licensing fees. Most people simply paid up. But when Leslie Klinger, a lawyer and Sherlock Holmes scholar, fought back, a court decisively confirmed that all of the elements in the out-of-copyright Sherlock Holmes stories are “free for public use.” The estate appealed, in a move that the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals described as bordering on the “frivolous” and “quixotic.” The appeals court affirmed Klinger’s right to use the Holmes and Watson characters and awarded him attorney’s fees. Judge Richard Posner called out the estate’s “unlawful business strategy”:

The Doyle estate’s business strategy is plain: charge a modest license fee for which there is no legal basis, in the hope that the “rational” writer or publisher asked for the fee will pay it rather than incur a greater cost, in legal expenses, in challenging the legality of the demand…only Klinger (so far as we know) resisted. In effect he was a private attorney general, combating a disreputable business practice — a form of extortion…It’s time the estate, in its own self-interest, changed its business model. Klinger v. Conan Doyle Estate (7th Cir. 2014).

Let us hope that 2026 does not see more of this type of disreputable legal overreach. 

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WHAT IS THE IMPACT OF THE LONG COPYRIGHT TERM?

For copyrighted culture, the public domain arrives only after a long wait. Works from 1930 were first set to go into the public domain after a 56-year term in 1986, but a term extension pushed that date to 2006. They were then supposed to go into the public domain in 2006, after being copyrighted for 75 years. But before this could happen, Congress hit a 20-year pause button and extended their copyright term to 95 years. Now the wait is over.

The works featured above are famous; that is why we included them. Their copyright holders benefitted from 20 more years of copyright because the works were still earning royalties. But they are just the tip of the iceberg. When Congress extended the copyright term for these works, it also did so for all of the works whose commercial viability had long lapsed. For the vast majority—probably 99%—of works from 1930, no copyright holder financially benefited from continued copyright. Yet they remained off limits, for no good reason.

A Congressional Research Service report indicated that only around 2% of copyrights between 55 and 75 years old retain commercial value. After 75 years, that percentage is even lower. Most older works are “orphan works,” where the copyright owner cannot be found at all.

This is why a former head of our Copyright Office concluded that adding an extra 20 years to the US copyright term was a “big mistake.” Indeed, there is a consensus among policymakers, economists, and academics that lengthy copyright extensions impose costs that far outweigh their benefits. Why? The benefits are minuscule—economists (including five Nobel laureates) have shown that term extension does not spur additional creativity. At the same time, it causes enormous harm, locking away millions of older works that are no longer generating any revenue for the copyright holders. Films have disintegrated because preservationists can’t digitize them. The works of historians and journalists are incomplete. Artists find their cultural heritage off limits.

The public domain enables the rediscovery and reuse of works that might otherwise be forgotten. Empirical studies have shown that public domain books are less expensive, available in more editions and formats, and more likely to be in print—see here, here, and here. The works highlighted above are just a tiny snapshot of what will be copyright-free. Many more are waiting to be found and appreciated.

While the arrival of works into the public domain is cause for celebration, the length of the copyright term means that even though works from 1930 are legally available, this does always not mean they are actually available. Many films from the era have been lost forever. Noteworthy lost or mostly lost films from 1930 include the sound version of John Ford’s Men Without Women and The Gorilla. 

The fact that works from 1930 are legally available also does not mean that rights holders won't continue to claim copyright over them. The previous section mentioned what an appeals judge called the "disreputable business practice" of charging "license fee[s] for which there is no legal basis." Yet rights holders continue to claim copyright over public domain properties. Lloyd Entertainment has told small community theaters that, unless the pay licensing fees, they cannot screen Safety Last! – a silent film that went into the public domain in 2019 – even when the theaters are using their own music and thought they were playing public domain prints. Lloyd claims that no public domain versions of the film exist because all available copies have been restored. Not all restorations have new copyrights, however. As mentioned earlier, if a film has been restored, only original and creative additions are eligible for copyright. If the restoration faithfully mimics the preexisting film, it does not contain newly copyrightable material and can be screened just like the public domain version. Many restorations contain new copyrightable material, but is it possible that every surviving print of Lloyd's movies is both restored, and sufficiently creatively changed to acquire a new copyright? The fact that this is in doubt underscores the problem with the long copyright term: after nearly a century, works may be legally available, but it is difficult to find original versions. Harold Lloyd was brilliant and the rights holders to his films enjoyed 95 years of copyright exclusivity. But when that term expires, theaters should be able to screen the films—this is exactly what the public domain is supposed to allow. It is disappointing to know that rights holders are targeting people who are merely trying to show films to fans, out of love and respect for the art.

To take a similar example, the owners of the rights to Charlie Chaplin’s films have been sending aggressive letters to small theaters telling them that they cannot screen Chaplin films that are legally in the public domain. The letters contain assertions about US copyright law that are, to use the technical term, bogus. To be sure, Chaplin was a genius and his successors have legitimate rights over his still-copyrighted films. But they do not have the right to squelch activities that are entirely legal. As Judge Posner commented earlier, falsely claiming an entitlement to licensing fees over public domain works can be "a form of extortion." 

The Chaplin Office nevertheless claims that the 1925 film The Gold Rush cannot be screened because the copyright in the underlying screenplay does not expire until 70 years after Chaplin’s death, or the end of 2047, because Chaplin was British and his copyright was restored under special rules for works by foreign authors. (They focus on the screenplay because the film entered the public domain in 1953 due to non-renewal of its copyright.) Even if this copyright restoration met the law's requirements (it does not appear to) there is a more basic mistake in their calculation: they cite to the wrong provision of US copyright law, §303, for the life + 70 term, ignoring that it is only for works that were “created but not published or copyrighted before January 1, 1978.” The Copyright Office records show that the screenplay was copyrighted in 1925, and for such works the law states that the copyright lasts for “the remainder of the term of copyright that the work would have otherwise been granted in the United States,” which is 95 years under §304 of the Copyright Act, making the work public domain in 2021. Case closed.

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WHAT ARE THE BASIC RULES FOR DETERMINING WHETHER SOMETHING IS PUBLIC DOMAIN?

How long does copyright last in the United States? Works fall into different categories depending on the circumstances of their production. Here is a chart showing the general rules for some of the commonly encountered categories, followed by a more detailed explanation. As a summary, this chart necessarily omits legal details. For a more granular chart please see the excellent "Copyright Term and the Public Domain" from the Cornell University library.

*These copyright terms are distilled from the duration provisions in sections 302-305 of the US Copyright Act, section 104A for foreign works with restored copyrights, and the Classics Protection and Access Act for older sound recordings. The 1978 and 1989 dates track important changes in US copyright law: January 1, 1978 was when our current copyright statute went into effect, and on March 1, 1989, the US joined an international copyright treaty called the Berne Convention.

Here are additional details. The 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act gave works published or registered before 1978 a 95-year term, expiring on January 1 after the conclusion of the 95th year. Doing the math, you add 96 years to the publication date. Works from 1930 were copyrighted for 95 years—through 2025—and are in the public domain January 1, 2026. This year's featured works are in the public domain because of either a 1930 registration or publication with a 1930 copyright notice. We were also able to track down the renewal data indicating that they are still in-copyright through the end of 2025 and entering the public domain in 2026.

Works published before 1978 had to meet certain requirements to be eligible for the full 95-year term—they had to be published with a copyright notice, and works from before 1964 also had to have their copyrights renewed after an initial 28-year term. Works published from 1978 through 3/1/1989 without a notice had to register their copyrights within five years to fix the lack of copyright notice. This means that many works published after 1930 might technically be in the public domain. However, as a practical matter, users sometimes have to assume they’re still copyrighted (or risk a lawsuit) because the relevant copyright information is difficult to find. We do not have clear and comprehensive records of copyright ownership and older records can be fragmentary, confused, or lost. In addition, as mentioned earlier, the concept of "publication" is important and has a special meaning under copyright law. It refers to when the work was sold or distributed to the general public with the authority of the copyright owner. Determining whether and when publication occurred can be complicated and vary depending on the kind of work—with music from before 1978, for example, the distribution of recordings of a song did not publish the song. 

For pre-1978 works that were never published or registered, the term is different: life-plus-70 years for works by natural persons, and 120 years from creation for works of corporate authorship. In this category, works created by people who died in 1955 are in the public domain in 2026. Newer works created since 1978 are also treated differently from those published before 1978. Works by natural persons from 1978 forward have a life-plus-70 term, while works of corporate authorship are copyrighted for 95 years after publication. This is the copyright term for works created today, and there are no longer notice or renewal requirements. 

What about foreign works? Some countries have a life-plus-50 term and many others, including EU countries, have a life-plus-70-year term, even for the older works that have the 95-year term in the US. This means that works might be copyrighted in one country and copyright-free in another. For example, W. Somerset Maugham’s Cakes and Ale enters the US public domain in 2026 but is still copyrighted elsewhere until 2036, because the author died in 1965. In life-plus-70 jurisdictions, works from authors who died in 1955 are public domain this year, so they are celebrating a different set of works on Public Domain Day. How do you know which law applies to you? As a general matter, courts have said that users are governed by the law in the jurisdiction where they are using the creative work. But this inquiry can be more complicated and depend on the circumstances surrounding the use.

In the US, many foreign works from 1930 are copyrighted until 2026 because of a provision that, in 1996, restored copyright over certain foreign works that had fallen into the US public domain because of non-compliance with notice or renewal requirements. This restored term applies to many of the foreign works we are highlighting. You can learn more about how this functions from the Copyright Office's circular Copyright Restoration Under the URAA. If the owners of copyright in foreign works filed a Notice of Intent to Enforce their restored copyright you can find that information here. You can also find copyright restoration records through the Copyright Office’s search portal here.

Rumor Alert! You may see inaccurate claims online that all works by non-US authors such as Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, or Hergé are not entering the US public domain because they are subject to a life + 70 copyright term. This is not true. The 1996 provision that restored US copyright over qualifying foreign works is clear that their copyrights last for “the remainder of the term of copyright that the work would have otherwise been granted in the United States.” For foreign works that were published or copyrighted in 1930 – such as the ones we highlight – this term is 95 years, and they enter the public domain in 2026.

What is the copyright term for sound recordings? The Music Modernization Act’s “Classics Protection and Access Act” established a timeline for old recordings to enter the public domain. Recordings first published between 1923–1946 are public domain in January 2024–2047 (the year after a 100-year term). Then there is a ten-year pause from 2048–2058. After that, recordings first published between 1947–1956 are public domain in January 2058–2067, after a 110-year term. The term for all remaining recordings first fixed from 1957 until February 15, 1972 ends on February 15, 2067. Note that the term of protection for sound recordings in other countries is different from the one in the US: in the EU it is 70 years, and elsewhere it is 50 years. 

CONCLUSION

This year’s entrants into the public domain are a wonderful group—enthralling, and deeply entertaining. Whatever your artistic interest, they have some delicious “cakes and ale” for you. Malvolio would disapprove. But they also offer us something deeper. 

Language and art were once domains that humans thought solely our own. Generative AI has forced us to re-articulate our conception of art and the creative process; to focus on the subjective experience behind the work, not just the pretty patterns manifested within it. In that context, it is fascinating to reflect on these works from 1930. What leaps out at you is the humanity behind them—the wit, the stylistic innovation, the stories being told in the shadow of World War I and in the midst of the Great Depression. 

These authors were producing meaning from lived experience, not just replicating patterns. Their artistic output is not merely a snapshot of our culture at a moment in time or an entertaining postcard from the past. It is a record of the lives they lived, the emotions they felt, and the art they made as a result of it. It gives new meaning to the Somerset Maugham quote with which we began this essay, speaking of the beauty that artists sometimes create out of chaos. “The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.” In the age of AI, those words seem to offer us a luminous insight. 

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Want to learn more about the public domain? Here is the legal background on how we got our current copyright terms (including summaries of court cases), why the public domain matters, and answers to Frequently Asked Questions. You can also read James Boyle’s book The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind (Yale University Press, 2008)—naturally, you can read the full text of The Public Domain online at no cost and you are free to copy and redistribute it for non-commercial purposes.

More information on the copyright term can be found on this excellent chart on Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States. For additional guidance from the Copyright Office, see its circulars on Duration of Copyright, How to Investigate the Copyright Status of a Work, and Copyright Restoration Under the URAA. For a detailed guide to identifying public domain material, you can purchase Stephen Fishman’s The Public Domain: How to Find & Use Copyright-Free Writings, Music, Art & More. You can also read “In Ambiguous Battle: The Promise (and Pathos) of Public Domain Day,” an article by Center Director Jennifer Jenkins revealing the promise and the limits of various attempts to reverse the erosion of the public domain, referring to a previous Public Domain Day.

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[1] Jennifer Jenkins is the Director of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain and Clinical Professor of Law at Duke Law School. James Boyle is the William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law at Duke Law School and Faculty Co-Director of the Center.

[2] Our featured works are only entering the public domain under US copyright law. The copyright term for older works is different in other countries. In the EU, works from authors who died in 1955 are going into the public domain in 2026 after a life-plus-70 year term. As a general matter, under the principle of lex loci delicti, users are governed by the law in the jurisdiction where they are using the creative work. See Itar-Tass Russian News Agency v. Russian Kurier, Inc. (2d Cir. 1998). But this inquiry can be complicated and fact-specific, and governing law will depend on the circumstances of the use in question. 

[3] Even though a work is still in-copyright, you may legally use it in certain ways if your activity qualifies for copyright’s “fair use” exception.

[4] To find more material from 1930, you can visit the Catalogue of Copyright Entries. In the US, only the author’s works from 1930 and earlier are in the public domain, not all of the other work published by that author. With regard to newly copyright-free works, only the original versions published in 1930 are entering the US public domain. Later versions of them—adaptations, movies, or translations—may still be copyrighted. However the later copyright only covers newly added creative material. The original content from the 1930 work remains free. As you look through these works from 1930, please note that they offer a temporal cross section of our cultural past, capturing the era in its complexity. Unfortunately many of the works from 1930 contain racist and sexist stereotypes and demeaning language. When such works enter the public domain, anyone is free to critique and remake them, even if doing so goes beyond what would be allowed under copyright’s fair use doctrine.

[5] Arnold Munk credited a book called “The Pony Engine” (1916) but later faced an unsuccessful claim that he took the story from Frances Ford who had written a similar story in 1910. For fascinating research into the stories that led up to Munk’s version, see Roy Plotnick, “In Search of Watty Piper: The History of the ‘Little Engine’ Story,” New Review of Children’s Literature and Librarianship, 18:11-26 (2012).

[6] We found "King Features Weekly" copyright renewals from 1935 that may cover the first appearance of Dagwood’s sandwich.

[7] Peter Benjaminson, The Life and Times of Betty Boop: The 100-Year History of an Animated Icon (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2023), p17: “Early one morning in 1930, Dave Fleischer told animator Grim Natwick to design a girl dog who would costar with Bimbo in a cartoon to be titled ‘Dizzy Dishes.’ Natwick was told that the new character, as yet unnamed, would be singing a ‘boop-oop-a-doop’ song similar to those sung by Helen Kane. Fleischer also handed Natwick a picture of Kane.” The lyrics from the song that Boop sings in Dizzy Dishes are from “I Have to Have You,” performed by Helen Kane in a film the year before. Animation Resources recounts similar origins in this biography of Grim Natwick. 

[8] You can find Bellot’s quote and a more in-depth analysis of the Betty Boop character before and after the Hays Code in Emily Wishingrad, “The Evolution of Betty Boop”, Smithsonian Magazine (March 9, 2022). Bellot further explained that "[Betty Boop] was a stereotype, yet she also defied stereotypes of what female cartoon characters could do onscreen. In The Life and Times of Betty Boop, Peter Benjaminson writes: “Betty is the only classic female comic character who isn’t someone’s wife, girlfriend, or regular employee. Unlike Olive Oyl, Blondie, and other cartoon women, Betty’s not defined by her relationship to a male character…She’s her own woman, known for herself, and not just because she belongs to some man.” 

[10] Note that US copyright law allows you to cover a song without permission while it is still copyrighted under the “compulsory license” in §115, so long as you do not “change the basic melody or fundamental character” of the original song and pay a pre-set royalty rate. When a song is in the public domain you can make covers without complying with this provision, and you can also make other adaptations, performances, and interpolations.

[11] The Music Modernization Act sets a timeline for older recordings to enter the public domain, and also has provisions allowing people to legally make noncommercial uses of still-copyrighted recordings that are no longer being commercially exploited. Older recordings contain a wealth of history; not just music but spoken word, radio broadcasts, oral histories. A lot of this material has faded into obscurity and is of interest primarily to scholars and hobbyists. But, like old films, old audio lives on a fragile substrate—many vintage formats deteriorate over time, to the point where they literally disintegrate, or it is impossible to play them again. Congress therefore included carveouts in the law to try and ensure that this history can be digitized and preserved for future generations. 

[12] For never-published, never-registered works, the term is life + 70 years.

[13] Special thanks to the FIFA World Cup Museum and to Michael Schmalholz, Team Leader Heritage, for providing records on the Lafleur sculpture. Thanks also to the Internet Archive for the Wayback Machine, which helped preserve many records that we otherwise might not have been able to find.

[14] In the 2011 case Fleischer Studios v. A.V.E.L.A., the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that Fleischer Studios was not the owner of the copyright to the Betty Boop character. The original Fleischer Studios sold those rights away and was dissolved in the 1940s. The rights in the Betty Boop character were carved out from the rights in the cartoons and the separate sets of rights were eventually transferred to different companies. Later the Fleischer heirs formed a new Fleischer Studios – “a distinct and separate entity from the now defunct Original Fleischer which first owned Betty Boop” – and tried to buy back the copyright to the Betty Boop character. There was a complicated chain of title: “Original Fleischer transferred its rights to Paramount Pictures, Inc. (Paramount) in 1941; Paramount transferred those rights to UM & M TV Corp. (UM & M) in 1955; in 1958, UM & M transferred these rights to National Telefilm Associates, Inc. (NTA), which became Republic Pictures in 1986; and finally, Republic Pictures transferred the exclusive copyright to Fleischer in 1997.” The problem? There is a broken link in the chain: “it is clear that Paramount did not transfer the copyright to the Betty Boop character to UM & M.” Because the copyright was kept by Paramount, rather than transferred to UM & M, UM & M could not transfer it down the line to Fleischer. Something could have happened since this 2011 decision – for example, Fleischer could have regained rights directly from Paramount – but we cannot find anything in the legal filings or Copyright Office records and do not know who now owns the rights at issue in A.V.E.L.A. If Fleischer owns copyrights in later cartoons, this would only confer rights over character features that were not derived from the iterations it does not own. Suffice it to say that the scope of their copyright claims is unclear, and any copyright actions against others would necessarily be limited to uses that infringe on what they actually own.

[15] To quote the Copyright Office primer on derivative works: “[I]t is not possible to extend the length of protection for a copyrighted work by creating a derivative work…the copyright in the derivative work will not extend to the public domain material, and the use of the public domain material in a derivative work will not prevent anyone else from using the same public domain work for another derivative work.”

[16] See the Copyright Office Compendium. Regarding generic character traits, courts have held that being “nice,” having a “cocky attitude,” and being “young, attractive, and sarcastic” are not independently copyrightable character traits. See Shame on You Prods. v. Banks (C.D. Cal. 2015, aff’d 9th Cir. 2017); Campbell v. Walt Disney Co. (N.D. Cal. 2010); Gable v. Nat’l Broad. Co. (C.D. Cal. 2010).

[18] See Stewart v. Abend (1990). 

[19] 15 U.S.C. §§1114, 1125(a). A small subset of superbrands with “famous” marks gets extra protection against “dilution” that impairs the distinctiveness or harms the reputation of the famous mark, even when there is no consumer confusion. This protection is limited to “famous” marks, as defined by trademark law. Fame has a specialized meaning here: only trademarks that are widely recognized by the general public as a brand signifier qualify. It is not enough that a character is famous in the general sense of the word. Instead, its depiction would need to function like the Nike Swoosh in designating product source. Importantly, even for trademarks that qualify, anti-dilution protection is subject to statutory First-Amendment exceptions that allow for the kinds of expressive uses discussed in this section. See 15 U.S.C. §1125(c)(3). For instance, even though “Barbie” is a famous mark that qualifies for anti-dilution protection, the statutory exceptions in §1125(c)(3) have allowed artists to use the “Barbie” trademark for artistic commentary.

[20] Trademark law has a number of speech-protecting limitations that safeguard artistic uses. These apply whether or not the trademark is also the subject of an expired copyright. One defense allows “nominative use” of a trademark as a point of reference – for example, using “Betty Boop” accurately to refer to the character in your work. Another comes from a case called Rogers v. Grimaldi, which privileged the use of trademarks in titles of expressive works when the term has some artistic relevance to the new work and does not explicitly mislead as to the source of the work. A 2023 Supreme Court decision let the Rogers test stand for these kinds of uses, see Jack Daniel's Properties, Inc. v. VIP Products LLC (2023), so long as the unauthorized use is not as a brand signifier. These doctrines are why Mattel loses in court when it sues people for using the word “Barbie” and the doll’s trademarked appearance in expressive works. See Mattel, Inc. v. Walking Mountain Productions (9th Cir. 2003); Mattel, Inc. v. MCA Records, Inc. (9th Cir. 2002). While a disclaimer is not required to benefit from these limitations, it can nevertheless be useful to make abundantly clear that you are not providing an official Fleischer Studios production. 

[21] Dastar v. Twentieth Century Fox (2003) (“We have been careful to caution against misuse or overextension of trademark and related protections into areas traditionally occupied by . . . copyright”). This case dealt with an attempt to make an attribution-like claim under the federal trademark statute over public domain works, but the larger policy underlying the decision is that trademark law cannot be used to circumvent copyright expiration. Dastar had repackaged parts of a public domain documentary, removing the original credits and presenting it as a Dastar production. Twentieth Century Fox owned the copyrights to the documentary before they expired and claimed that Dastar violated trademark law by passing off Fox’s work as its own and failing to attribute it to Fox. The Supreme Court rejected this claim.

[22] Comedy III v. New Line (9th Cir. 2000). Nonetheless, people sometimes still try to use trademark law to interfere with legal reuses of public domain material, leading to unnecessary litigation and chilling effects. Zorro Productions, Inc. and Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. did this with the Zorro works and the Tarzan and John Carter works. Zorro lost in court—because the Zorro story was in the public domain, a new “Queen of Swords” TV series about Zorro’s sword-wielding daughter could proceed. See Sony v. Fireworks (C.D. Cal. 2001) (the case also included unsuccessful copyright claims). Burroughs was able to extract a joint licensing deal from the publisher of new “Lord of the Jungle” and “Warlord of Mars” comic books; even the threat of lawsuits can chill creative reuse.

[23] The leading treatise on trademark law explains: “The expiration of copyright on a copyrighted work, such as a motion picture containing a cartoon character, should place limits on the scope of trademark rights in the character. Under the view that upon expiration of copyright the public should have free use of the work, copyright policy requires that anyone should be able to reproduce, display and perform the out-of-copyright motion picture so long as there is no confusion as to the source, sponsorship or affiliation of the seller of the reproduced film,” and “a court should not permit trademark in an image to serve the same function as did the lapsed copyright to exclude others from reproducing and distributing the out-of-copyright work, such as a film . . . a balancing of the rights of trademark and of the 'public domain' status of out-of-copyright works is needed. A similar balancing is made when constitutional free speech policies are balanced against the prevention of consumer confusion.” J. Thomas McCarthy, McCarthy on Trademarks and Unfair Competition, § 6.30.

[24] Maljack Prods. v. Goodtimes Home Video Corp. (9th Cir. 1996), quoting Leslie A. Kurtz, "Protection for Titles of Literary Works in the Public Domain", 37 Rutgers L. Rev. 53, 77 (1984). See also Walt Disney Productions v. Souvaine Selective Pictures, Inc. (S.D.N.Y. 1951, aff'd 2d Cir. 1951) (Disney could not prevent another film producer from using the title “Alice in Wonderland” because “the book ‘Alice in Wonderland’ is no longer subject to copyright and is as much in the public domain as are Shakespeare’s plays. Anyone has a legal right to make a picture based on Lewis Carroll’s book and entitled ‘Alice in Wonderland’”). 

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Written by Jennifer Jenkins and James Boyle. Special thanks to Researcher Sterling Dudley for researching works from 1930 and creating images and video content, to Jason Rosenberg for researching the provenance of artworks from 1930, and to web developers Michael Wright and Isaiah Cooper for building this site.

 Public Domain Day 2026 by Jennifer Jenkins and James Boyle is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

This website is not official legal advice. Instead, it is a summary of United States law relevant to the public domain and a guide to some of the works entering the public domain in 2026.