Research Guides: Navigate Copyright: Public Domain

What is the Public Domain?

Public Domain is defined by Merriam Webster's online dictionary as "the realm embracing property rights that belong to the community at large, are protected by copyright or patent, and are subject to appropriation by anyone."

Works in the public domain can be used by anyone for free, without asking for permission.

Some works are born into the public domain, while others reach that state after they have outlived the copyright creator's protection laws (expired).

Born Public Domain works include:

Government Documents
Slogans
Facts and Ideas

Expired into the Public Domain works include:

Works published before 1926 in the United States, whose author died 70+ years ago

Please remember that, while public domain works are freely available, transformative works based on public domain works may be protected by copyright. For example, William Shakespeare's Hamlet is in the public domain because it was written around 1599. Kenneth Branaugh's film version of Hamlet is protected by copyright because it was completed in 1996.

Center for the Study of Public Domain | Duke Law
The Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School is the first university center in the world devoted to the other side of the picture. Founded in September of 2002, as part of the school's wider intellectual property program, its mission is to promote research and scholarship on the contributions of the public domain to speech, culture, science and innovation, to promote debate about the balance needed in our intellectual property system and to translate academic research into public policy solutions.

The public domain is the realm of material—ideas, images, sounds, discoveries, facts, texts—that is unprotected by intellectual property rights and free for all to use or build upon. Our economy, culture and technology depend on a delicate balance between that which is, and is not, protected by exclusive intellectual property rights. Both the incentives provided by intellectual property and the freedom provided by the public domain are crucial to the balance. But most contemporary attention has gone to the realm of the protected.

Examples of Resources in the Public Domain

Project Gutenberg
Smithsonian Institution Public Domain Images
New York Times Public Domain Images
Library of Congress - Free to Use and Reuse Sets (Images)
The Prelinger Archive of advertising, educational, industrial and amateur films
Librivox (audiobooks in the public domain)

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