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Source: https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2026/
January 1, 2026 is Public Domain Day: Works from 1930 are open to all, as are sound recordings from 1925!
By Jennifer Jenkins and James Boyle[1]
CC BY 4.0
Please note that this site is only about US law; the copyright terms in other countries are different.[2]
On January 1, 2026, thousands of copyrighted works from 1930 enter the US public domain, along with sound recordings from 1925. They will be free for all to copy, share, and build upon.[3] The literary highlights range from William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying to Agatha Christie’s The Murder at the Vicarage and the first four Nancy Drew novels. From cartoons and comic strips, the characters Betty Boop, Pluto (originally named Rover), and Blondie and Dagwood made their first appearances. Films from the year featured Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, the Marx Brothers, and John Wayne in his first leading role. Among the public domain compositions are I Got Rhythm, Georgia on My Mind, and Dream a Little Dream of Me. We are also celebrating paintings from Piet Mondrian and Paul Klee. Below you can find lists of some of the most notable books, characters, comics, and cartoons, films, songs, sound recordings, and art entering the public domain.[4] After each of them, we have provided an analysis of their significance. At the end of the article, we explain:
Why all of this matters
How do copyright and trademark law apply to characters?
What is the impact of the long copyright term?
What are the basic rules for determining whether something is public domain?
Conclusion
BOOKS
William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon (the full book version)
Agatha Christie, The Murder at the Vicarage (the first novel featuring Miss Marple)
Carolyn Keene (pseudonym for Mildred Benson), the first four Nancy Drew books, beginning with The Secret of the Old Clock
Watty Piper (pen name of Arnold Munk), The Little Engine That Could (the popular illustrated version, with drawings by Lois Lenski)
William H. Elson, Elson Basic Readers (the first appearances of Dick and Jane)
Noël Coward, Private Lives
T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday
Evelyn Waugh, Vile Bodies
John Dos Passos, The 42nd Parallel
Edna Ferber, Cimarron
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison
J. B. Priestley, Angel Pavement
Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (in the original German, Das Unbehagen in der Kultur)
Elizabeth Coatsworth (author) and Lynd Ward (illustrator), The Cat Who Went to Heaven
Arthur Ransome, Swallows and Amazons
W. Somerset Maugham, Cakes and Ale
Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness
This is just a small selection from the thousands of books and plays entering the public domain in 2026. The famous works include modernist masterpieces, detective stories, a science-fiction classic, an early self-help book, and a seminal work on psychoanalysis. All of them and thousands more will be copyright-free in the US. The newly public domain corpus also includes a wealth of children’s and young adult fiction—the first four Nancy Drew books, the introduction of the characters Dick and Jane, a Newbery Award winner about the life of The Buddha, and the popular illustrated version of The Little Engine That Could.
Works from 1930 are not only enriching the public domain; they also illustrate its value.
“I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.” –W. Somerset Maugham
That is a quote from W. Somerset Maugham, whose novel Cakes and Ale is entering the public domain in 2026. But artists don’t merely create “beauty…out of the chaos,” though our current moment has lots of the latter. They create beauty by drawing on our shared culture. Look at Maugham’s title: “Cakes and Ale.” Maugham himself was referring to a classic public domain work, in this case Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. “Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?” says Sir Toby Belch reprovingly to his pompous Puritan steward Malvolio, who is always eager to judge the behavior of others. Maugham reuses the line precisely to make the same point about puritanical moralizing and, in the case of his novel, artistic hypocrisy. The narrator is disgusted by the snobbery and judgmental attitudes of his contemporaries towards Rosie Driffield, a former barmaid who became the wife of a famous fictional novelist. Rosie came from a working-class background and was forthright, without pretension, and sexually free. She is now decried for those qualities, but the narrator finds her far more impressive than the bourgeois scolds who disdain her. The title reaches back 330 years to show that one of our greatest playwrights was mocking faux puritanism in exactly the same way. Maugham's point is that the human race relives those moments and emotions in every era; the desire to moralize is always with us. Now his work is in the public domain and we, too, can reuse his insights and artistry to create new art.
The same point holds true for many of the other works entering the public domain this year. The title of Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying came from Homer’s Odyssey. The public domain contains far more than works with expired copyrights—names, titles, and very short phrases are not copyrightable standing alone and are therefore public domain in the US; one does not have to wait for the expiration of the copyright term. But when works enter the public domain, the artistic freedom granted over them is far greater. Plot, characters, images, vignettes; all can now be mined for future inspiration. And that, too, was true in the past just as it is now. The tale of the tenacious little engine that pulls the train over the mountain had been circulating in various forms before the Watty Piper version, or the predecessor it credits.[5] To tell new stories, we draw from older ones. One work of art inspires another – that is how the public domain feeds creativity. Why care about the public domain? That is one reason why.
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CHARACTERS, COMICS, CARTOONS
Betty Boop from Fleischer Studios' Dizzy Dishes and other cartoons
Rover (later renamed Pluto) from Disney's The Chain Gang (as an unnamed bloodhound) and The Picnic (as Rover)
Blondie and Dagwood from the Blondie comic strips by Chic Young
Flip the Frog from Fiddlesticks and other cartoons, by Ub Iwerks after he left Disney
Nine new Mickey Mouse cartoons, the initial week of Mickey Mouse comic strips, and ten new Silly Symphonies cartoons from Disney
Betty Boop was introduced in the Fleischer Studios’ wonderful cartoon Dizzy Dishes, set in a restaurant full of anthropomorphic animals. She is instantly recognizable, with the familiar flapper girl appearance, pouting lips, enormous doe eyes, tiny button nose, and kiss-curls. She even sings her high-pitched “Boop Oop A Doop” tagline—but in a characteristic Fleischer touch of surrealism she has elongated dog ears (similar in shape to her later hoop earrings) and facial expressions that morph between human and animalistic. Betty’s boyfriend-to-be is a dog-chef called Bimbo, who serenades her on a duck that transforms into a guitar, while the restaurant clientele and staff include a fantastical menagerie of animals. The vibe is decidedly trippy: duck-guitars, lovestruck dog-chefs, dancing flapper cats, and needy gorillas. Betty is remarkably sexy. But, because she was designed as a girlfriend for Bimbo, she also has dog ears. The dissonance fits the setting. By contrast, Disney’s character Rover, later renamed Pluto, inhabits a world in The Picnic that is both cuter and more normal—Rover licks Mickey with unbridled enthusiasm, chases rabbits, and provides Mickey and Minnie with comedic canine companionship.
The contrast between the Fleischer and Disney aesthetics is fascinating. Max Fleischer once said, “If it can be done in real life, it isn’t animation.” Dizzy Dishes certainly does not disappoint. As described by the late Charles Silver, who ran MoMA’s Film Study Center, “Disney was based in Los Angeles and reflected the ‘wholesome’ mid-American values of Uncle Walt’s Kansas City roots. Fleischer’s New York product was more sophisticated and cosmopolitan…Broadly speaking, there was an innocence in Disney’s view of the world, while Fleischer projected an underlying kinkiness.” Our colleague Casey Herbert, who teaches cartoon history at Duke, put it this way: “Max and Dave Fleischer’s characters were drawn from the urban environment they knew so well. Vaudeville, dance-halls, diners, drinking and drugs were routinely part of the hallucinogenic mayhem…On the other hand, Walt, his brother Roy, and best friend Ub Iwerks, the core of the early Disney enterprises, all had roots in rural middle America. With upbeat music and clever solutions, mechanical and animal troubles of all sorts were resolved with a simple, can-do attitude that Mickey and his pals exude.”
As more of Disney’s and Fleischer’s classic works enter the public domain, it is worth reflecting on how deeply their styles are embedded in the DNA of today’s animation. Now, entering 2026, we look back and think it inevitable that one genre of cartoons will be cutesy and folksy, with slapstick humor and an upbeat vibe, while another will use the unparalleled artistic freedom afforded by the cartoon medium to explore a distinctly more surreal worldview, sensual and trippy, with wild nightlife and mind-bending transformations. Looking back to 1930, we can find the progenitors of both, and see how the traditions began to diverge. Indeed, it is striking how “edgily modern” some of the Fleischer cartoons feel. To look into each year’s newly public domain crop is to open a time-capsule that offers fresh insights about our culture.
As with Mickey Mouse, Popeye, and Winnie-the-Pooh, it is the original 1930 iterations of Betty Boop and Rover/Pluto that are entering the public domain. Newer, different versions of the characters are still copyrighted, and trademark rights still cover the character names and designs when they are used on merchandise as brand signifiers. The rules are complex and explored in more detail here, with their application to Betty Boop discussed here.
Among the other highlights from 1930 are additional Mickey Mouse comic strips and cartoons, in which the famous mouse continues to develop, and the comic strip Blondie, featuring early versions of Blondie and Dagwood. In 1930 they are not yet married, and Dagwood has not yet discovered his signature sandwich.[6] Blondie’s maiden name is Boopadoop—similar to Betty Boop’s scat-singing catchphrase, which in turn echoed the phrase associated with the singer and actress Helen Kane and has been traced back to the African-American jazz performer “Baby” Esther Lee Jones. (Kane actually sued the Fleischers for appropriating the phrase, along with her persona and singing style. In response, the Fleischers claimed that Kane had copied those attributes from Esther Jones. The judge ruled against Kane. Based on the reports we can find, the accuracy of the specific claims and counterclaims is unclear, but accounts of Boop's creation indicate that the character was based at least partly on Kane.)[7]
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FILMS
All Quiet on the Western Front, directed by Lewis Milestone (winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture)
King of Jazz, directed by John Murray Anderson (musical revue featuring Paul Whiteman and Bing Crosby’s first feature-film appearance)
Cimarron, directed by Wesley Ruggles (winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture, registered for copyright in 1930)
Animal Crackers, directed by Victor Heerman (starring the Marx Brothers)
Soup to Nuts, directed by Benjamin Stoloff (written by Rube Goldberg, featuring later members of The Three Stooges)
Morocco, directed by Josef von Sternberg (starring Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich, and Adolphe Menjou)
The Blue Angel (Der blaue Engel), directed by Josef von Sternberg (starring Marlene Dietrich)
Anna Christie, directed by Clarence Brown (Greta Garbo’s first talkie)
Hell's Angels, directed by Howard Hughes (Jean Harlow’s film debut)
The Big Trail, directed by Raoul Walsh (John Wayne’s first leading role)
The Big House, directed by George Hill
Murder!, directed by Alfred Hitchcock
L'Âge d'Or, directed by Luis Buñuel, written by Buñuel and Salvador Dalí
Free and Easy, directed by Edward Sedgwick (Buster Keaton’s first speaking role)
The Divorcee, directed by Robert Z. Leonard
Whoopee!, directed by Thornton Freeland
War films, musicals, thrillers, Westerns, comedies, surrealist satires—this year’s newly public domain films run the gamut. They feature familiar actors: Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, John Wayne, the Marx Brothers, and the film debut of Moe Howard and Larry Fine, who would later be long-running members of The Three Stooges. There are also familiar names among the directors and writers: Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hughes, and even Rube Goldberg and Salvador Dalí.
These films predated the enactment of the 1934-1968 “Hays Code” that censored profanity, criminal activity, “indecent” dance costumes, and sexual content such as “excessive and lustful kissing, lustful embraces, suggestive postures and gestures.” In Morocco, Marlene Dietrich, handsomely dressed in a top hat and tails, famously kisses another woman. King of Jazz features the sequence “I Like to Do Things For You,” described on Wikipedia as “humorously sadomasochistic.” Pre-Code Betty Boop was overtly seductive. As critic Gabrielle Bellot wrote: “On the one hand, Betty Boop was a creation of the heterosexual male gaze, with an endless parade of lecherous male characters trying to see under her skirt, yet on the other hand she wore power like a light shawl, her image an in-your-face depiction of unashamed sexuality.”[8] Post-Code Betty Boop covered her shoulders and garter. As with Maugham’s Rosie from Cakes and Ale, frank female sexuality was not to be tolerated. Malvolio would have liked the Hays Code.
Some of the scenes from these films are eerily resonant today. In King of Jazz, a man gets drunk and stammers: “You know what’s the matter with this country? It’s a tariff! That’s who!”, referring to the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act that deepened the Great Depression. Today, there is a lot of debate about whether the public knows enough about the importance of the rule of law and the protections of due process. At the end of Animal Crackers, Groucho and Chico Marx (as Captain Spaulding and Ravelli) have this exchange.
Groucho: “We go to court and get a writ of habeas corpus.”
Chico: “You gonna get rid of what?”
Groucho: “Haven’t you ever heard of habeas corpus?”
Chico: “No, but I’ve heard of ‘Habie’s Irish Rose’.”
Groucho sighs in exasperation and walks away
As Faulkner, the author whose novel begins this year’s list of books, wrote: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
Cimarron is featured even though it was released in 1931 because it was copyrighted in 1930 and the earlier date controls (date discrepancies are resolved “in favor of the public”). Please note that only the original films from 1930 are public domain; later versions might have newly added material that is still copyrighted. If a film has been restored or reconstructed, only original and creative additions are eligible for copyright; if a restoration faithfully mimics the preexisting film, it does not contain newly copyrightable material. Putting skill, labor, and money into a project is not enough to qualify it for copyright, and the Supreme Court has made clear that “the sine qua non of copyright is originality.”
What about the music in the films? We are in the era when “talkies” – movies with sound – were new. As with other works, the statutory copyright terms for this music began either upon “publication” or copyright registration. If musical works were previously unpublished or unregistered and first appeared in a film from 1930, the general rule is that the music was published along with the film and is also public domain in 2026. (The same is true of the "sounds accompanying a motion picture," discussed below.) In other circumstances, however, a film and its underlying music may have different copyright terms. If a song was copyrighted separately before the film, for example, the song would have entered the public domain earlier than the film, after its own 95-year term. Conversely, if the copyright in the song was renewed while the copyright in the film was not, the song remained copyrighted after the film went into the public domain. This happened with It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)—the movie’s copyright was not renewed but the soundtrack’s copyright was, so the movie was public domain while the soundtrack and underlying short story were not. But if musical works made their first appearance in a film and the film rights were renewed, then the prevailing view is that the movie and music enter the public domain at the same time.[9]
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MUSICAL COMPOSITIONS
Four Songs - I Got Rhythm, I've Got a Crush on You, But Not for Me, and Embraceable You - with lyrics by Ira Gershwin, music by George Gershwin
Georgia on My Mind, lyrics by Stuart Gorrell, music by Hoagy Carmichael
Dream a Little Dream of Me, lyrics by Gus Kahn, music by Fabian Andre and Wilbur Schwandt
Livin' in the Sunlight, Lovin' in the Moonlight, lyrics by Al Lewis, music by Al Sherman
On the Sunny Side of the Street, lyrics by Dorothy Fields, music by Jimmy McHugh
It Happened in Monterey, lyrics by Billy Rose, music by Mabel Wayne
Body and Soul, lyrics by Edward Heyman, Robert Sour, Frank Eyton, music by Johnny Green
Just a Gigolo (the first English translation), original German lyrics by Julius Brammer, English translation by Irving Caesar, music by Leonello Casucci
You're Driving Me Crazy, lyrics and music by Walter Donaldson
Beyond the Blue Horizon, lyrics by Leo Robin, music by Richard A. Whiting and W. Franke Harling (possible inspiration for the Star Trek theme song)
The Royal Welch Fusiliers, by John Philip Sousa
1930 brought us enduring jazz standards and popular songs. From George and Ira Gershwin came I Got Rhythm, the source of the foundational jazz chord progression known as the “rhythm changes,” and But Not for Me, memorably featured in the film When Harry Met Sally (RIP Rob Reiner). You might still find yourself humming the classics Georgia on My Mind and Dream a Little Dream of Me today. Just A Gigolo offered an early, melancholy take on the proverbial player who’s “gonna play, play, play.”
Only the musical compositions—the music and lyrics that you might see on a piece of sheet music—are entering the public domain, not the recordings of those songs, which are covered by a separate copyright with a different term of protection. The lyrics and music to Georgia on My Mind and Livin’ in the Sunlight, Lovin’ in the Moonlight were published in 1930 and will be free for anyone to copy, perform, record, adapt, or interpolate into their own song.[10] But the later recordings by Ray Charles and by Tiny Tim are still copyrighted. (Readers may remember the Tiny Tim recording from the first episode of SpongeBob SquarePants—that episode had to be omitted from the first season DVD because the rights were not cleared with Tiny Tim’s estate.) Sound recording rights are more limited than composition rights, however. You can legally imitate a sound recording – should you be able to channel Tiny Tim’s signature falsetto – even if your imitation sounds exactly the same, you just cannot copy from the actual recording.
Calculating the copyright term for these early songs can be tricky. Under the law at the time, the copyright clock only started ticking when songs were published in sheet music form, not merely released as recordings. Even though Mood Indigo came out in 1930, the sheet music was not published until 1931, so it will not be in the public domain until 2027. If works were registered for copyright and published in different years, the earlier date controls. So copyright lapses over Dream a Little Dream of Me in 2026 because its copyright was registered in 1930, even though it was not published until 1931.
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SOUND RECORDINGS
Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen, recorded by Marian Anderson
Yes Sir, That's My Baby, recorded by Gene Austin
Sweet Georgia Brown, recorded by Ben Bernie and His Hotel Roosevelt Orchestra
You've Been A Good Old Wagon, recorded by Bessie Smith
The St. Louis Blues, recorded by Bessie Smith, featuring Louis Armstrong
Fascinating Rhythm, recorded by the Paul Whiteman Orchestra
I'll See You in My Dreams, recorded by Isham Jones, with Ray Miller’s Orchestra
Everybody Loves My Baby (but My Baby Don't Love Nobody but Me), recorded by Clarence Williams’ Blue Five
If I Lose, Let me Lose (Mama Don't Mind), recorded by Louis Armstrong, Fletcher Henderson, and Maggie Jones
A Cup of Coffee, A Sandwich and You, recorded by the Carleton Terrace Orchestra
Manhattan, recorded by The Knickerbockers (Ben Selvin and his Orchestra)
Under the 2018 Music Modernization Act, recordings from 1925 will be open for legal reuse after the conclusion of a 100-year term. There are some incredible performances: the civil rights icon Marian Anderson singing Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen in her haunting contralto, and The St. Louis Blues recorded by Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong. Only the 1925 recordings made by these artists are entering the public domain, not their later recordings. To listen to old recordings, you can go to the Library of Congress National Jukebox.[11]
Sound recordings within a movie are treated differently from separate sound recordings because copyright law’s definition of “sound recording” specifically excludes “sounds accompanying a motion picture.” So the 1930 recordings as they appeared in the film King of Jazz have the same copyright term as the movie and are public domain in 2026, while regular sound recordings from 1930 that were independent of motion pictures have the 100-year term and their copyrights won’t expire until 2031.
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ART
Piet Mondrian, Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow
Abel Lafleur, the Jules Rimet Cup (the original trophy of the FIFA World Cup, also known as the Victory Trophy or Coupe du Monde)
Edward Steichen, Fashion for Vogue, October 27, 1930
Paul Klee, Tierfreundschaft (Animal Friendship)
José Clemente Orozco, Prometheus
Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Composition of Circles and Overlapping Angles
Theo Van Doesburg, Simultaneous Counter-Composition
Copyright will also expire in 2026 over works of art that were published or registered in 1930, reflecting artistic movements ranging from Art Deco to Constructivism and Neoplasticism. In the traumatic years of World War I, Paul Klee wrote that “the more horrifying this world becomes, the more art becomes abstract.” Artists such as Klee, Mondrian, Taeuber-Arp, and van Doesburg abstracted the world around them: stylizing, simplifying, flattening, and deconstructing. But the artists on our list also include José Clemente Orozco, whose intensely realistic Prometheus was described by Jackson Pollock as “the greatest painting in North America,” and Edward Steichen, who went on to revolutionize minimalism in commercial fashion photography.
Determining the copyright status of older artworks is challenging. They are only public domain in 2026 if they were “published” as defined by copyright law in 1930, and it is often unclear when exactly publication occurred.[12] The rules are murky and “published” is a legal term of art that was not well-defined. Generally the law looks at whether the art was genuinely released to the public by being exhibited without restrictions on copying, circulated in a magazine or catalogue with authorization, or offered for sale to the public. If it was created but remained only in the artist’s studio or shown only to a limited group, this did not count. But artistic records from almost 100 years ago are difficult to find. Our tireless research assistant Jason Rosenberg spent months contacting experts and combing through exhibition catalogues, museum archives, journals, catalogue raisonnés, provenance indexes, auction records, and biographies to confirm whether the highlighted works were published in 1930.
There are other legal wrinkles too. Works by US artists had to comply with copyright “formalities,” including initial publication with a copyright notice and renewal after 28 years, to enjoy the full 95-year term. This is why American Gothic – which is from 1930 – is not on our list; it was by an American artist, Grant Wood, and entered the public domain in 1958 when its copyright was not renewed. Foreign authors such as Mondrian and Klee are treated differently—because of a 1996 provision that restored copyright over certain foreign works, they are eligible for the full term without notice or renewal. For such authors, the question is whether their works were actually “published” in 1930.[13]
You may see reports that the Chrysler building is entering the public domain in 2026 because it was constructed in 1930. The building was reportedly scrubbed from the 2023 Spider-Man 2 video game because of a copyright claim. However, there is no legal basis for such a claim. US copyright law only covers buildings created on or after December 1, 1990, when protection was first extended to architectural works. And even with newer copyrighted buildings, the law allows “pictorial representations of the work, if the building in which the work is embodied is located in or ordinarily visible from a public place.” So if the Spider-Man story is true, it would be an example of copyright overreach or overly cautious avoidance.
Here is a short video celebrating the works entering the public domain in 2026.
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Keep reading to learn more about the public domain! You can use the links below to jump to the answers.
Why celebrate the public domain?
How do copyright and trademark law apply to characters?
What is the impact of the long copyright term?
What are the basic rules for determining whether something is public domain?
Conclusion
WHY CELEBRATE THE PUBLIC DOMAIN
When works go into the public domain, they can legally be shared, without permission or fee. 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. 1930 was a long time ago and the vast majority of works from that year are not commercially available. You couldn’t buy them, or even find them, if you wanted. When they enter the public domain in 2026, anyone can rescue them from obscurity and make them available, where we can all discover, enjoy, and breathe new life into them.
The public domain is also a wellspring for creativity. You could think of it as the yin to copyright’s yang. Copyright law gives authors important rights that encourage creativity and distribution—this is a very good thing. But the United States Constitution requires that those rights last only for a “limited time,” so that when they expire, works go into the public domain, where future authors can legally build on the past—reimagining the books, making them into films, adapting the songs and movies. That’s a good thing too! It is part of copyright’s ecosystem. The point of copyright is to promote creativity, and the public domain plays a central role in doing so.
The Supreme Court explained: “The copyright term is limited so that the public will not be permanently deprived of the fruits of an artist’s labors.” To quote Justice Joseph Story, this benefits the public by “admitting the people at large, after a short interval, to the full possession and enjoyment of all writings . . . without restraint.”
How does the public domain feed creativity? Here are just a few current illustrations. In 2025 you may have enjoyed Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, derived from Mary Shelley’s novel, or Wicked: For Good, derived from L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Perhaps you are looking forward to Christopher Nolan’s forthcoming epic IMAX version of The Odyssey, Wuthering Heights starring Margot Robbie as Catherine Earnshaw, or Lear Rex, a new version of King Lear starring Al Pacino as Lear. The Great Gatsby entered the public domain in 2021 and has already spawned a number of creative reworkings. 2025 saw others join them. We had The Gatsby Gambit, The Great Mann, Local Heavens, and Mrs. Wilson's Affair: A Great Gatsby Retelling. Clearly, this is a public domain work on which today's novelists have been feasting. Shakespeare, Dickens, and Austen continue to spawn adaptations too, including a reimagining of Hamlet in present-day London, A Far Better Thing (A Tale of Two Cities with fairy changelings), and The Season of Dragons (Pride and Prejudice and dragons). We haven't yet read it, but very much hope it contains the line, "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single dragon in possession of a good hoard of treasure, must be in want of a wife."
The works we are celebrating from 1930 also illustrate how the public domain nurtures creativity. Once again, a fine exemplar is Disney, whose beloved works, from Snow White and Cinderella to The Jungle Book and Sleeping Beauty, have consistently built upon the public domain. That was as true in 1930 as it is today. The Mickey Mouse cartoons from 1930 made ingenious reuse of public domain music. Here are some of the public domain songs from these works: Morning, Night and Noon in Vienna by Franz von Suppé (1844), the William Tell Overture by Gioachino Rossini (1829), Orphée aux Enfers by Jacques Offenbach (1858), A Hunting We Will Go by Thomas Arne (1777), Oh Susanna and Old Folks at Home/Swanee River by Stephen Foster (1848, 1851), The Farmer in the Dell (1820s) and Pop Goes the Weasel (1850s) (traditionals), and a tune known as the Snake Charmer Song (1840s). All of these compositions date from before 1880, when the maximum copyright term was 42 years, and could be freely used in 1930 animations.
Sometimes people worry that entry into the public domain could mean the desecration of a beloved character or plot. Yes, inevitably there will be those who capitalize on public domain status to make deliberately shocking content—the slasher movie based on Winnie the Pooh comes to mind, or the low-budget horror films featuring Mickey Mouse. Works like that may even generate outrage—that is their whole marketing plan! But will they be remembered? We have always been able to make slasher or porn versions of Shakespeare, yet I am guessing that the Shakespearean adaptations you remember are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (from Hamlet, RIP Tom Stoppard), West Side Story (from Romeo and Juliet), Forbidden Planet (from The Tempest), or 10 Things I Hate About You (from The Taming of the Shrew). From the serious to the whimsical, these are public domain reuses with more enduring appeal. Far from dimming the luster of the original works, they have allowed their legacy to live on. The best reason not to care about the merely shocking use of public domain works, without an underlying artistic point, is that they tend not to stand the test of time.
This point is true far beyond Shakespeare. Think of all the other films, cartoons, books, plays, musicals, video games, songs, and other works based on Greek mythology, on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or on the works of Austen and Dickens. The Odyssey inspired not only the upcoming Christopher Nolan epic and the title of As I Lay Dying, but also centuries of other remakes—The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Ulysses, and the Coen brothers’ O Brother Where Art Thou, to name just a few.
Note that the public domain extends beyond works whose copyrights have expired. Some material is born in the public domain. Ideas, facts, and raw data can never be copyrighted. The public domain also includes official works of the US government such as legislation, legal opinions, and even NASA images. The images from the James Webb telescope, the NASA collections NASA on The Commons (flickr) and NASA image and video library, the famous “Earthrise” photograph taken by astronaut William Anders, and the Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection (a pictorial record of American life from 1935-1944 that includes Dorothea Lange's powerful photograph "Migrant Mother," one of the enduring images of the Great Depression) are all copyright-free. Another category of public domain material consists of works that creators choose to dedicate to the public domain, and many have done so using Creative Commons’ CC0 tool.
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HOW DO COPYRIGHT AND TRADEMARK LAW APPLY TO CHARACTERS?
When Mickey Mouse 1.0 went into the public domain in 2024, he joined a host of other public domain characters—Winnie-the-Pooh, Sherlock Holmes, Snow White, Cinderella, Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, Robin Hood, Santa Claus, and the Wonderful Wizard of Oz characters, to name a few. This year, we get the first versions of Betty Boop and Pluto (originally named Rover) and new iterations of Mickey and Minnie Mouse. Looking ahead, an exciting new cast of characters will become public domain in the coming years: the initial appearance of Goofy in 2028 (originally named Dippy Dawg), Donald Duck in 2030, Superman in 2034, Batman in 2035, Tom and Jerry and Bugs Bunny in 2036, and Wonder Woman in 2037.
Long-running characters such as Betty Boop and Mickey Mouse are subject to both expired and enduring rights. This creates a fascinating checkerboard of material that is free and still owned. The overall result is a layered mosaic of public domain and copyrighted character attributes. Here is a summary, with the legal rules spelled out in more detail afterward and applied to Betty Boop.
Beginning with Mickey Mouse as a concrete example, dozens of iterations of the mouse fall into each of the categories above. In the top left quadrant, we will have 24 Mickey cartoons (from 1928-1930) and 6 comic strips (1930) that have entered the public domain due to copyright expiration after the full term. At the top right, there are also non-renewed cartoons and over a thousand additional comic strips just from 1930-1935 that appear to be public domain due to non-renewal. And in the bottom row, there are decades of still-copyrighted works, as well as continuing trademark rights for the use of Mickey’s image on various Disney products.
The non-renewed works in the top right quadrant present an additional legal twist. The only aspects that became public domain upon non-renewal were their new features, not material derived from earlier works that remained in-copyright. The chronology of owned and free in such works is inverted. The new is free; the old may be subject to copyright.
Here is how this nuance plays out in one Mickey story without a renewed copyright—the 1934 tale of Rumplewatt the Giant. This story introduces a gnome village from which the titular giant steals a golden goose. After Mickey defeats the giant, the butterfly who initially flew him to the castle morphs into Princess Minnie. As a reward for his valiance, she agrees to marry Mickey. So far as we can tell, these elements were newly introduced in the 1934 comic. If this is correct, they are in the public domain due to non-renewal.
At the same time, Rumplewatt the Giant derived many of its elements from the still-copyrighted cartoon Giantland (1933). These include a sequence where Mickey hides in a sugar-cube jar and ends up in the giant’s coffee cup, and a bit where Mickey uses pepper to make the giant sneeze. Assuming these were original to Giantland, they are still copyrighted. Even though they reappear in the non-renewed comic, they are not in the public domain because they originated in a work that is still under copyright. Finally, both works share basic “ideas” that are uncopyrightable and were always in the public domain—these include the generic “hero fights a giant and defeats him” plot line.
BETTY BOOP
Betty Boop provides another illustration. As Betty Boop 1.0 enters the public domain, this is an opportunity to celebrate and appreciate Max and Dave Fleischers’ unparalleled artistry and pioneering animation. While Fleischer Studios may not be as well-known to the general public as Disney, perhaps they should be.
We know that Boop’s initial appearances from 1930 are public domain in 2026. There are also dozens of post-1930 Betty Boop cartoons that have long been public domain due to non-renewal. And there are many still-copyrighted works featuring Boop, plus trademark rights over her name and depiction for certain products.
Fleischer Studios has posted a statement called “Fact Check 2026: Is Betty Boop in the Public Domain?". It begins with "this year Betty Boop appeared on a number of [public domain] lists, claiming that she will enter the public domain on January 1, 2026, which is actually not true" and elaborates:
While the copyright in the ‘Dizzy Dishes’ cartoon may fall into the public domain in 2026, this does not affect Fleischer Studios’ copyright in the fully developed BETTY BOOP character Fleischer Studios created in subsequent cartoons and other uses and continues to use today. Fleischer Studios’ copyright in that character will therefore remain in force for some years to come, as will Fleischer Studios’ copyrights in the many subsequently revised and modern versions of the BETTY BOOP character and related elements. Equally important, the BETTY BOOP name and various related character designs are well-known and valuable Fleischer Studios trademarks.
This is interesting because while Fleischer Studios does own continuing trademark rights over Betty Boop (discussed below), its claim to copyright over the fully developed character is less clear. In fact, in 2011, an appeals court definitively held that Fleischer did not own the copyright in the Boop character.[14] The original Fleischer Studios had gone out of business and sold off its rights in the 1940s. The current Fleischer Studios, “a distinct and separate entity,” had later tried to buy back those rights. The only issue before the court was whether Fleischer owned the familiar Boop character. The court ruled that, because “the chain of title is broken,” it did not. (Beside the text you can see, from the court exhibits, two versions of Boop that Fleischer did not then own. As you can see, they are more “modern” than the 1930 Boop with her subtle dog ears.) Perhaps Fleischer has since reacquired some of those rights, or perhaps they only have the rights over newly added features from the “subsequent cartoons and other uses” they mention. In the latter case, those rights would be narrow and would not extend to the underlying Boop character at issue in the 2011 decision. One thing is clear: regardless of who owns the later versions of the character, the original Betty Boop character from 1930 is in the public domain.
If your head is spinning from all the complexities involved here, congratulations! You are in good company. This is another reason why copyright expiration is so important: It brings clarity. There can be multiple separate copyrights implicated in a single creative work – over characters, audiovisual content, music, and so on. During a copyright term that lasts almost 100 years, those multiple rights may have changed hands many times and may no longer be owned by a single entity, or indeed by any entity we can identify. It can be incredibly difficult to figure out who owns what. When entire works become public domain, they are free for reuse without having to untangle this web of ownership.
Thankfully, now that Betty Boop 1.0 is public domain, the ownership and chain of title questions are immaterial. She, at least, is copyright-free. That brings us to another set of questions: What features of the newer, copyrighted Boop characters are still subject to exclusive ownership, and what is free to the public? Expanding on the checkerboard above, here are more specifics about the legal rules, and how they apply to Betty Boop.
EXPIRED AND SUBSISTING COPYRIGHTS
We begin with the left column on the checkboard above. When the copyright expires over a creative work, the characters within that work enter the public domain, and you can use them in new works without permission or fee. What if those characters also appear in more recent works that remain copyrighted?
First, under US copyright law, anyone is free to use characters as they appeared in public domain works. If those characters recur in later works that are still under copyright, the rights only extend to the newly added material in those works, not the underlying material from the public domain works—that content remains freely available.
Second, with newer versions of characters, copyright only extends to those new features that qualify for such protection. The features must be “original, creative expression,” meaning that they were independently created (as opposed to copied from somewhere else) and possess at least a modicum of creativity. Mere “ideas” such as generic character traits are not copyrightable. Nor are “merely trivial” or “minuscule” variations added to the original characters. It is not enough for the new material to be different; it has to meet copyright’s threshold requirements for protectability. In addition, using commonplace elements that have become standard or indispensable (copyright law calls these “scènes à faire”) is not infringement.[15] Finally, if your use qualifies as “fair use,” for example if you make a scathing parody that significantly transforms the original work, the copyright owner has no right to stop you.
From what we have said so far, you can see that even when a work is still under copyright, the rightsholder’s control is not absolute. Here is a serendipitous example. In Nichols v. Universal (1930), the author of the play Abie’s Irish Rose (mentioned above as part of the Marx Brothers’ pun) sued the producers of a popular movie for copyright infringement, claiming appropriation of her characters and plot. The judge rejected this claim, invoking as an example Shakespeare’s Sir Toby Belch from Twelfth Night, the source of W. Somerset Maugham’s Cakes and Ale title highlighted earlier. The judge wrote:
If Twelfth Night were copyrighted, it is quite possible that a second comer might so closely imitate Sir Toby Belch or Malvolio as to infringe, but it would not be enough that for one of his characters he cast a riotous knight who kept wassail to the discomfort of the household, or a vain and foppish steward who became amorous of his mistress. These would be no more than Shakespeare’s “ideas” in the play, as little capable of monopoly as Einstein’s Doctrine of Relativity, or Darwin’s theory of the Origin of Species.
Applying this to Abie’s Irish Rose, the judge explained why copying two lovers from the play would not be infringement: “The lovers are so faintly indicated as to be no more than stage properties. They are loving and fertile; that is really all that can be said of them, and anyone else is quite within his rights if he puts loving and fertile lovers in a play of his own, wherever he gets the cue.”
How do these legal rules apply to Betty Boop? BOOP! the Musical was made when the character was still under copyright. Permission needed to be obtained. What if you wanted to make your own different Betty Boop musical in 2026, now that Boop 1.0 is in the public domain?
All of Boop’s features from the 1930 cartoons are public domain in 2026. In her first appearance in Dizzy Dishes, she has the familiar flapper girl appearance and dance moves, and sings variations of “Boop Oop a Doop” to the besotted Bimbo character.
That Betty Boop is in the public domain, along with the lyrics, plot, and incredible animation. So are the Boops from other 1930 cartoons (to the left, Barnacle Bill and Mysterious Mose). However, those are not the only parts of the character in the public domain. Some of her features were not copyrightable from the beginning, because they were copied from elsewhere. Her general appearance and “Boop Oop A Doop” catchphrase were inspired by the Jazz Age flapper girl archetype, as embodied by celebrities such as Helen Kane.[16] It was the way those came together into a captivating new character that was copyrighted and is now entering the public domain.
Here is how Betty Boop developed over time, from Fleischer Studios' "Becoming Betty Boop" website.
What features of newer Betty Boops are copyrightable? While copyright still covers the overall post-1930 depictions of Boop, it does not extend to unoriginal, “merely trivial,” or stereotypical modifications of Boop 1.0, such as replacing the dog ears with human ones, dressing her in standard attire for a cabaret performer or homemaker, adding a Rosie the Riveter bandana, or modulating her voice to reflect newer singing styles.
We went through this same process two years ago with Mickey Mouse. Mickey 1.0 did not have red shorts or speak in a high-pitched voice; those traits were added in later, still-copyrighted works. When the original Mickey became public domain, we were asked by many reporters whether creators could color his shorts red or have him talk in a falsetto. Are those variations, standing alone, copyrightable? Does choosing a single, bright, primary color for an article of clothing, or giving an animated mouse a squeaky voice (given that mice actually squeak), meet the copyrightability threshold? We would say no, but reasonable people could disagree on exactly where the line is to be drawn.
Let us be clear: None of this detracts from the astounding creativity in the Fleischer cartoons—they are some of the most innovative cartoons we have ever seen! The later works contain a wealth of copyright-eligible material such as plot lines, dialogue, and new characters. But with any creative work – as the quote about Twelfth Night demonstrates – there are also uncopyrightable building blocks that remain free for future creators. The challenge is to separate the copyrightable wheat from the uncopyrightable chaff.
NON-RENEWED COPYRIGHTS
We now turn to the top right quadrant in the checkerboard—the plot thickens when we add works that are also in the public domain due to non-renewal. Under early copyright law, copyrights lapsed after 28 years if they were not renewed. Dozens of post-1930 Betty Boop cartoons, including Ker-Choo (1932) and Poor Cinderella (1934), did not have renewals.[17] The newly added material in these animations is also in the public domain. As mentioned earlier, however, the material derived from still-copyrighted Boop animations is not.[18]
To sum up the copyright story so far: in 2026, the underlying Betty Boop character goes into the public domain. She is joined there by the attributes, plot lines, and dialogue that were first introduced in those later cartoons without renewed copyrights, as well as the uncopyrightable attributes of her later instantiations.
WHAT IF THE CHARACTER IS NO LONGER COPYRIGHTED, BUT ITS NAME OR IMAGE IS STILL SUBJECT TO TRADEMARK RIGHTS?
We finish with the bottom right quadrant: trademarks. You may encounter claims that even though Betty Boop 1.0 is copyright-free in 2026, you still cannot use the character in new creative works because it
is trademarked by Fleischer Studios. But this is not what the law actually says. While Fleischer’s trademark rights over Betty Boop are unaffected by her entry into the copyright public domain, those rights are limited. Trademark law only prohibits the use of a trademarked character if doing so “is likely to cause confusion, or to cause mistake, or to deceive” consumers about the source or sponsorship of a new product.[19] Here is a brief summary of the relevant law.
Trademark rights are designed to prevent consumer confusion in the marketplace. They are not supposed to interfere with artistic expression that doesn’t create such confusion.
Trademark law does not prevent you from using a public domain character’s name or image in a new creative work so long as consumers are not likely to be misled into thinking that your work is produced or sponsored by the trademark holder. In addition, the law has special rules that allow creators to use other people’s trademarks in artistic works without liability.[20]
Trademarks do not override copyright law.The Supreme Court has made clear that trademark rights cannot be used to block the freedoms that the expiration of copyright allows, such as using a public domain character in a book or movie.[21]
→ Therefore, trademark rights do not prevent you from using the 1930 Betty Boop character in a new creative work unless consumers will be confused into thinking it is a Fleischer-sponsored product.