Do fary tales hold a copyright?

Answer 1

Copyright law varies from country to country, but in the United States, a general rule is that anything published before 1923 is in the public domain. As most Fairy Tales were published before then, they would no longer be under copyright in the United States. If you are not in the United States, you may want to check to see what the copyright laws are in your country; anything in the public domain is not subject to copyright and can be used legally without charge or permission.

However, re-tellings of fairy tales (for instance, Disney movies based on fairy tales) may be copyrighted, but only the form that those take (in this example, the movies themselves, any character designs that the Walt Disney Company created specifically for the movie, the specific dialogue that was not originally part of the work, etc.) is copyrighted, not the story itself. Likewise, books that have editorial annotations may be under copyright, but only the editorial annotations themselves would be copyrighted, and only if they themselves still retain their copyright.