Copyright Basics for Faculty

What is Public Domain?

According to the U. S. Copyright office, "A work of authorship is in the “public domain” if it is no longer under copyright protection or if it failed to meet the requirements for copyright protection. Works in the public domain may be used freely without the permission of the former copyright owner."

When is a work in the Public Domain?

Most of the works in public domain are published in the United States before 1923 since that is the cutoff date used by the law to determine copyright.

Works that generally fall into the public domain meet the following criteria:

1. the term of copyright for the work has expired

2. the author failed to satisfy to meet the copyright standard

3. U.S. Government works (pamphlets, laws, building codes, etc.)

4. facts

Note: Compilations or collections of public domain works may be copyrighted.

Helpful Links:

Public Domain Information:

Welcome to the Public Domain - Copyright Overview by Rich Stim - Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center

The Public Domain Review – Online journal dedicated to showcasing the most interesting and unusual out-of-copyright works available on the web

Finding Works in the Public Domain:

For guidelines to determine if a work is in the public domain, see the American Library Association’s Digital Copyright Slider.

Search for works in the public domain include:

• Hathi Trust: http://www.hathitrust.org/ 
• The Internet Archive: http://archive.org/  
• Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/