HOW SHERLOCK HOLMES BROKE COPYRIGHT LAW; The Atlantic, January 7, 2025

Alec Nevala-Lee , The Atlantic; HOW SHERLOCK HOLMES BROKE COPYRIGHT LAW

"The estate based its argument on a distinction between “flat” and “round” fictional characters first proposed by E. M. Forster in his 1927 book, Aspects of the Novel, a concept frequently invoked in high-school literature classes but never previously tested in court.

In its legal filings, the estate drew a contrast between “flat” characters without depth—such as Superman and Amos and Andy—and “round” characters such as Holmes, who were capable of complexity and change. Doyle, it said, continued to develop Holmes to the very end, gradually transforming him from a reasoning machine into an empathetic figure who displays affection for women, dogs, and even his long-suffering partner. And it soon became clear that this argument would have enormous implications for copyright holders, who would be motivated to retain control over their characters by changing them incrementally for as long as possible."

Wicked and the Importance of the Public Domain; Reason, January 1, 2025

JOE LANCASTER , Reason; Wicked and the Importance of the Public Domain

"But at the moment there is perhaps no better testament to the importance of the public domain than Wicked."

POPEYE, ‘THE SKELETON DANCE,’ AND ‘SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN’ ENTER THE PUBLIC DOMAIN; Rolling Stone, January 1, 2025

DANIEL KREPS, Rolling Stone ; POPEYE, ‘THE SKELETON DANCE,’ AND ‘SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN’ ENTER THE PUBLIC DOMAIN

"The first iteration of Popeye the Sailor, literary classics by Dashiell Hammett and William Faulkner, Alfred Hitchcock’s first sound film, and songs like “Singin’ in the Rain” and “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” are among the copyrighted works that will enter the public domain on Jan. 1.

 

As the calendar turns on New Year’s Day, thousands of copyrighted works across literature, film, and music from 1929 become open to fair use. This year’s slate also includes the French comic icon Tintin, Disney’s still-iconic The Skeleton Dance short (38 million views on YouTube!), Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, and the first English translation of All Quiet on the Western Front (the original German text became public domain last year).

Jennifer Jenkins, the director of Duke Law School’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, documents each year’s Public Domain Day highlights on the center’s website.

 

“For copyrighted culture, the public domain arrives only after a long wait,” Jenkins wrote of the 2025 entrants. “Works from 1929 were first set to go into the public domain after a 56-year term in 1985, but a term extension pushed that date to 2005. They were then supposed to go into the public domain in 2005 after being copyrighted for 75 years. But before this could happen, Congress hit another 20-year pause button and extended their copyright term to 95 years. Now the wait is over.” (For sound recordings, the copyright term is 100 years.) 

Public Domain Day in 2024 was highlighted by the arrival of Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse, as the first iteration of those characters — as featured in the 1928 short Steamboat Willie — became free to use."

Column: A Faulkner classic and Popeye enter the public domain while copyright only gets more confusing; Los Angeles Times, December 31, 2024

Michael Hiltzik , Los Angeles Times; Column: A Faulkner classic and Popeye enter the public domain while copyright only gets more confusing

"The annual flow of copyrighted works into the public domain underscores how the progressive lengthening of copyright protection is counter to the public interest—indeed, to the interests of creative artists. The initial U.S. copyright act, passed in 1790, provided for a term of 28 years including a 14-year renewal. In 1909, that was extended to 56 years including a 28-year renewal.

In 1976, the term was changed to the creator’s life plus 50 years. In 1998, Congress passed the Copyright Term Extension Act, which is known as the Sonny Bono Act after its chief promoter on Capitol Hill. That law extended the basic term to life plus 70 years; works for hire (in which a third party owns the rights to a creative work), pseudonymous and anonymous works were protected for 95 years from first publication or 120 years from creation, whichever is shorter.

Along the way, Congress extended copyright protection from written works to movies, recordings, performances and ultimately to almost all works, both published and unpublished.

Once a work enters the public domain, Jenkins observes, “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.”"

Happy Public Domain Day! Popeye, ‘Rhapsody in Blue,’ ‘The Sound and the Fury’ and Thousands of Other Captivating Creations Are Finally Free for Everyone to Use; Smithsonian Magazine, December 30, 2024

Ellen Wexler, Smithsonian Magazine ; Happy Public Domain Day! Popeye, ‘Rhapsody in Blue,’ ‘The Sound and the Fury’ and Thousands of Other Captivating Creations Are Finally Free for Everyone to Use

"On January 1, 2025, Popeye—along with thousands of other copyrighted creations—will enter the public domain in the United States.

Every year, Jennifer Jenkins, director of Duke University School of Law’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, publishes an exhaustive analysis of some of the most important works entering the public domain. This year, the list includes copyrighted titles from 1929 and sound recordings from 1924.

Works enter the public domain when their copyrights expire, typically 95 years after publication. At that point, they become free for anyone to adapt or build upon without permission—with a few caveats. Copyrights to audio recordings, meanwhile, expire 100 years after they were first put to wax...

As Jenkins points out, many of the celebrated classics entering the public domain this year were themselves built atop other public domain works. Disney featured more than a dozen copyright-free songs in its 1929 Mickey cartoons. William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, which enters public domain on January 1, gets its name from Shakespeare’s Macbeth: “[Life] is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing.” Faulkner, Jenkins writes, is an “author of a timeless work that took from the public domain and now gives back to it.”"

A Farewell to Copyright: International Public Domain Day 2025; Denver Public Library Special Collections and Archives, December 23, 2024

Eden I., Denver Public Library Special Collections and Archives; A Farewell to Copyright: International Public Domain Day 2025

"On January 1, 2025, any work published with a copyright notice in the United States in 1929 enters the public domain. Many notable works have been entering the public domain after a 20-year pause beginning in 1999. In recent years, works like The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Disney’s Steamboat Willie have famously entered the public domain. 

What is public domain, and why is it important? Public domain simply means that a work is no longer subject to copyright and is available to the public as a whole. The work is free to be copied in its entirety, reused, adapted, or distributed. The public domain is like a sandbox of works the public can use to play and create. ...

Here in Special Collections and Archives, we are concerned with the copyright surrounding both published and unpublished works. Unpublished works in which the creator died before 1955 will be in the public domain at the beginning of 2025. For unpublished works created by a company, the copyright does not expire until 120 years after the work was created. For many of these unpublished works though, the copyright was transferred to Special Collections and Archives when the physical collection was donated."

Popeye and Tintin will soon lose copyright protection; Axios, December 27, 2024

• Rebecca Falconer , Axios; Popeye and Tintin will soon lose copyright protection

"Fun fact: The character Buck Rogers "first appeared in 1929 and is public domain in 2025, but technically the futuristic space hero has already been copyright-free for decades, despite claims that he was still copyrighted," Jenkins writes.

• "This is because the copyright registration for the Buck Rogers comic strip was not renewed, so that its copyright expired after 28 years. Also, the original version of the character was actually introduced in a novella as 'Anthony Rogers' in 1928; that character has long been public domain as well.""

Popeye, Tintin and more will enter the public domain in the new year; NPR, December 26, 2024

 Rachel Treisman, NPR; Popeye, Tintin and more will enter the public domain in the new year

"The main thing they have in common is their age — under U.S. copyright law, their terms all expire after 95 years. All of the works entering the public domain next year are from 1929, except for sound recordings, which (because they are covered by a different law) come from 1924.

"Copyright's awesome … but the fact that rights eventually expire, that's a good thing, too, because that's the wellspring for creativity," says Jennifer Jenkins, the director of Duke's Center for the Study of the Public Domain, which spends months poring over records to compile the most famous examples.

Once in the public domain, these works become fodder for remakes, spinoffs and other adaptations."

A farewell to copyright protection for Hemingway, Hammett — and Popeye; Marketplace, December 25, 2024

 Matt Levin, Marketplace; A farewell to copyright protection for Hemingway, Hammett — and Popeye

"Let’s say you’re a hip-hop artist and for whatever reason, you want to spit bars over a sample of the jazz standard “Everybody Loves My Baby” with Louis Armstrong on cornet.

In 2024, that’s a hassle. “You’ve got to clear the sound recording copyright, and that is easier said than done,” explained Jennifer Jenkins, a professor at Duke Law School. “You have to figure out who owns it. You’ve got to find them. You’ve got to get them to respond to you, and you’ve got to negotiate a deal.”

But once the ball drops at midnight Jan. 1, you can remix that Satchmo recording to your heart’s content, no contracts required."

January 1, 2025 is Public Domain Day: Works from 1929 are open to all, as are sound recordings from 1924!; Center for the Study of the Public Domain

 Jennifer Jenkins and James Boyle

Directors, Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain
CC BY 4.0, Center for the Study of the Public Domain; January 1, 2025 is Public Domain Day: Works from 1929 are open to all, as are sound recordings from 1924!

"Please note that this site is only about US law; the copyright terms in other countries are different.[1]

On January 1, 2025, thousands of copyrighted works from 1929 will enter the US public domain, along with sound recordings from 1924. They will be free for all to copy, share, and build upon.[2] 2025 marks a milestone: all of the books, films, songs, and art published in the 1920s will now be public domain. The literary highlights from 1929 include The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner, A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, and A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf. In film, Mickey Mouse speaks his first words, the Marx Brothers star in their first feature film, and legendary directors from Alfred Hitchcock to John Ford made their first sound films. From comic strips, the original Popeye and Tintin characters will enter the public domain. Among the newly public domain compositions are Gershwin’s An American in Paris, Ravel’s Bolero, Fats Waller’s Ain’t Misbehavin’, and the musical number Singin’ in the Rain. Below is just a handful of the works that will be in the US public domain in 2025.[3] To find more material from 1929, you can visit the Catalogue of Copyright Entries.

The title of Faulkner’s novel was itself taken from a public domain work, Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and its lament over the seeming meaningless of life. “Life…is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing.” The Sound and the Fury was published on October 7, 1929, on the eve of the Great Depression."

All these iconic artworks and characters lose copyright in 2025; Creative Bloq, December 7, 2024

Joe Foley , Creative Bloq; All these iconic artworks and characters lose copyright in 2025

"You may have been lucky enough to avoid the gruesome Winnie the Pooh horror movies of the last couple of years, but there are more such irreverent delights to come as more intellectual property loses copyright protection in 2025. A host of famous artworks and much-loved characters will enter the public realm next year, making them fair game for all kinds of adaptations.

Last year, Mickey Mouse was the biggest star to come out of copyright (with a few caveats). So what's coming in 2025? A gruesome Popeye the Sailor for starters (that looks set to be almost as controversial as the Snow White remake)."

US Trademark Office cancels Marvel, DC's 'Super Hero' marks; Reuters, September 26, 2024

Blake Brittain , Reuters; US Trademark Office cancels Marvel, DC's 'Super Hero' marks

"A U.S. Trademark Office tribunal has canceled a set of "Super Hero" trademarks jointly owned by comic giants Marvel and DC at the request of a London-based comic book artist, according to a Thursday order.

The USPTO's Trademark Trial and Appeal Board ruled for S.J. Richold's Superbabies Ltd after Disney's Marvel and Warner Bros' DC did not file an answer to Superbabies' request to invalidate the marks.

Spokespeople and attorneys for Marvel and DC did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Superbabies attorney Adam Adler of Reichman Jorgensen Lehman & Feldberg said in a statement that the ruling was "not just a win for our client but a victory for creativity and innovation."

"By establishing SUPER HEROES' place in the public domain, we safeguard it as a symbol of heroism available to all storytellers," Adler said."

Adobe gets called out for violating its own AI ethics; Digital Trends, June 3, 2024

  Andrew Tarantola , Digital Trends; Adobe gets called out for violating its own AI ethics

"Last Friday, the estate of famed 20th century American photographer Ansel Adams took to Threads to publicly shame Adobe for allegedly offering AI-genearated art “inspired by” Adams’ catalog of work, stating that the company is “officially on our last nerve with this behavior.”...

Adobe has since removed the offending images, conceding in the Threads conversation that, “this goes against our Generative AI content policy.”

However, the Adams estate seemed unsatisfied with that response, claiming that it had been “in touch directly” with the company “multiple times” since last August. “Assuming you want to be taken seriously re: your purported commitment to ethical, responsible AI, while demonstrating respect for the creative community,” the estate continued, “we invite you to become proactive about complaints like ours, & to stop putting the onus on individual artists/artists’ estates to continuously police our IP on your platform, on your terms.”"

Public domain, where there is life after copyright; CBS News, Sunday Morning, April 14, 2024

Lee Cowan , CBS News, Sunday Morning; Public domain, where there is life after copyright

"Jenkins said, "The public domain doesn't represent the death of copyright. It's just the second part of copyright's life cycle."

The concept of putting an expiration date on intellectual property was something the founding fathers actually put in the U.S. Constitution, "...to promote the progress of science and the useful arts." They left it to Congress, however, to decide just how long copyright terms should last...

Duke University's Jennifer Jenkins said, "Copyright gives rights to creators and their descendants that provide incentives to create. But the public domain really is the soil for future creativity."

There are surely more copyright clashes ahead. Characters like Bugs Bunny, Superman and Batman will all find themselves out of copyright protection soon enough.

Even Luke Skywalker will eventually find himself in the public domain, too, sometime around 2073. That sure seems like a galaxy far, far way."

A fight to protect the dignity of Michelangelo’s David raises questions about freedom of expression; AP, March 28, 2024

 Colleen Barry, AP; A fight to protect the dignity of Michelangelo’s David raises questions about freedom of expression

"The decisions challenge a widely held practice that intellectual property rights are protected for a specified period before entering the public domain — the artist’s lifetime plus 70 years, according to the Berne Convention signed by more than 180 countries including Italy.

More broadly, the decisions raise the question of whether institutions should be the arbiters of taste, and to what extent freedom of expression is being limited...

Court cases have debated whether Italy’s law violates a 2019 European Union directive stating that any artwork no longer protected by copyright falls into the public domain, meaning that “everybody should be free to make, use and share copies of that work.”

The EU Commission has not addressed the issue, but a spokesman told the AP that it is currently checking “conformity of the national laws implementing the copyright directive” and would look at whether Italy’s cultural heritage code interferes with its application."

This AI Model Is Trained On Public Domain Stills To Create Mickey Mouse Images; Cartoon Brew, February 5, 2024

JAMIE LANG, Cartoon Brew ; This AI Model Is Trained On Public Domain Stills To Create Mickey Mouse Images

"In the comments section of an article about Mickey-1928 published by Ars Technica, Langlais explained that he’s aware of the line his model may be crossing by using Stable Diffusion and says that the public domain might provide a lot of answers to the ethical and legal questions raised by the emergence of AI tech:

I do agree with the issues of using a model trained on copyrighted content. I’m currently part of a new project to train a French LLM on public domain/open science/free culture sources, not only out of concern for author rights but also to enforce better standards of reproducibility and data provenance in the field. I’m hoping to see similar efforts on diffusion models this year. My general impression is that the copyright extension terms have made impossible an obvious solution to the AI copyright problem: having AI models trained openly on 20th century culture, and thus creating powerful incentives to digitize newspapers, books, movies for the commons."

How A Mickey Mouse Horror Movie Is Releasing Only 2 Months After Disney Lost The Copyright; Screen Rant, January 31, 2024

 EIDHNE GALLAGHER, Screen Rant; How A Mickey Mouse Horror Movie Is Releasing Only 2 Months After Disney Lost The Copyright

"Mickey Mouse is one of several popular characters who have entered the public domain in the 2020s. However, this upcoming horror movie is solely focusing on the Steamboat Willie version of Mickey Mouse. While the copyright claim on Steamboat Willie has expired, Disney has not lost all their rights to their mascot. Every Mickey Mouse movie and character evolution that took place after Steamboat Willie remains protected under copyright law, and Disney will continue to use the character as a trademarked mascot."

The Public Domain Benefits Everyone – But Sometimes Copyright Holders Won’t Let Go; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), January 22, 2024

 CARA GAGLIANO, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); The Public Domain Benefits Everyone – But Sometimes Copyright Holders Won’t Let Go

"Unlike copyright, trademark protection has no fixed expiration date. Instead, it works on a “use it or lose it” model. With some exceptions, the law will grant trademark protection for as long as you keep using that mark to identify your products. This actually makes sense when you understand the difference between copyright and trademark. The idea behind copyright protection is to give creators a financial incentive to make new works that will benefit the public; that incentive needn’t be eternal to be effective. Trademark law, on the other hand, is about consumer protection. The function of a trademark is essentially to tell you who a product came from, which helps you make informed decisions and incentivizes quality control. If everyone were allowed to use that same mark after some fixed period, it would stop serving that function.

So, what’s the problem? Since trademarks don’t expire, we see former copyright holders of public domain works turn to trademark law as a way to keep exerting control. In one case we wrote about, a company claiming to own a trademark in the name of a public domain TV show called “You Asked For It” sent takedown demands targeting everything from episodes of the show, to remix videos using show footage, to totally unrelated uses of that common phrase. Other infamous examples include disputes over alleged trademarks in elements from Peter Rabbit and Tarzan. Now, with Steamboat Willie in the public domain, Disney seems poised to do the same. It’s already alluded to this in public statements, and in 2022, it registered a trademark for Walt Disney Animation Studios that incorporates a snippet from the cartoon.

The news isn’t all bad: trademark protection is in some ways more limited than copyright—it only applies to uses that are likely to confuse consumers about the use’s connection to the mark owner. And importantly, the U.S. Supreme Court has made clear that trademark law cannot be used to control the distribution of creative works, lest it spawn “a species of mutant copyright law” that usurps the public’s right to copy and use works in the public domain. (Of course, that doesn’t mean companies won’t try it.) So go forth and make your Steamboat Willie art, but beware of trademark lawyers waiting in the wings."

Lifecycle of Copyright: 1928 Works in the Public Domain; Library of Congress Blogs: Copyright Creativity at Work, January 8, 2024

Alison Hall , Library of Congress Blogs: Copyright Creativity at Work; Lifecycle of Copyright: 1928 Works in the Public Domain

"This blog also includes contributions from Jessica Chinnadurai, attorney-advisor, and Rafael Franco, writer-editor intern in the Copyright Office.

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 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...

Below are just a few of the historical and cultural works that entered the public domain in 2024."

'Steamboat Willie' is now in the public domain. What does that mean for Mickey Mouse?; NPR, January 1, 2024

Neda Ulaby , NPR; 'Steamboat Willie' is now in the public domain. What does that mean for Mickey Mouse?

""You know, he's evolved so much and become more 3D and colorful," observes Ryan Harmon, a former Disney Imagineer, of the character today. He remembers anxious talk, when he worked at the company in the 1990s, about the beloved icon eventually entering the public domain.

But that's not happening, says Kembrew McLeod, a communications professor and intellectual property scholar at the University of Iowa.

"What is going into the public domain is this particular appearance in this particular film," he says.

That means people can creatively reuse only the Mickey Mouse from Steamboat Willie. Not the Mickey Mouse in the 1940 movie Fantasia. Nor the one on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, a kids' show that aired on the Disney Channel for a decade starting in 2006.

New versions of Mickey Mouse remain under copyright. Copyright applies to creative characters, movies, books, plays, songs and more. And as it happens, Mickey Mouse is also trademarked.

"Trademark law is entirely about protecting brands, logos and names — like Mickey Mouse as a logo, or the name Mickey Mouse," McLeod says.

"And of course, trademark law has no end," adds Harvard Law School professor Ruth Okediji. Disney and other corporations, she says, use trademarks to extend control over intellectual property.""