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Real Property

As it pertains to land in America, the public domain is land within the boundaries of the United States which has never been titled and is therefore held by the US Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management as its custodial owner.

Intellectual Property

In terms of intellectual property "public domain" refers to items that have no restrictions of use due to expiration of legal controls (patents, trademarks, copyright). Public domain is when no one any longer holds the rights to some type of work. It can be a book, photo, music, movie, TV show, etc. You can do whatever you want to with a public domain work without fear of copyright infringement.

A copyright is supposed to expire 75 after the work is published. However, due to lobbying by corporations, especially Disney, that has been changed and the the cut off for works being transferred to the public domain is held at 1923 until 2019. This means that any work, if published before 1923, is automatically in the public domain. However there are several works after this period that have fallen into public domain because until 1978, when the laws were changed, you were forced to explicitly show the copyright next to the name of your work if shown in public (such as the title of a movie). Failure to do so would result in the movie falling into public domain. Some of the movies that are in public domain: Night of the Living Dead (1968), Reefer Madness (1936), and Phantom of the Opera (1925).

All works created or registered before 1923 and and works created/registered before 1964 and not renewed in a timely manner are currently in the public domain.

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15y ago

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Works no longer protected by copyright are said to be in the public domain.


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