Copyright and Intellectual Property Toolkit

The term “public domain” encompasses those materials that are not protected by intellectual property laws such as copyright, trademark, or patent laws. No individual owns these works; rather, they are owned by the public. Anyone can use a public domain work without obtaining permission and without citing the original author, but no one can ever own it. 

There are four common ways that works arrive in the public domain:

• The copyright has expired.  Copyright expires 70 years after the death of the creator/original copyright holder. For more information on copyright term, see the August 2023 guide from Cornell University Libraries.
• The copyright owner failed to follow copyright renewal rules.
  • Works created on or after January 1, 1978, are not subject to renewal registration. Works published or registered prior to January 1, 1978 have an optional copyright registration renewal after 28 years.
• The copyright owner deliberately places it in the public domain, known as “dedication."
• Copyright law does not protect this type of work.

An important caveat to public domain material is that, while each work belongs to the public, collections of public domain works may be protected by copyright. If, for example, someone has collected public domain images in a book or on a website, the collection as a whole may be protectable even though individual images are not. In those cases, you are free to copy and use individual images but copying and distributing the complete collection may infringe what is known as the “collective works” copyright. Collections of public domain material will be protected if the person who created it has used creativity in the organization and presentation of the public domain material. This usually involves some unique selection process, for example, a poetry scholar compiling a book.

(Information for this section was taken from "Welcome to the Public Domain" from the Stanford University Libraries.) 

When using works from the Public Domain, you do not need to credit the author nor do you need to get permission, according to the 2003 ruling from the US Supreme Court. 

However, it is wise to cite your sources, so crediting the original author or the source is a best practice. Be careful of copying directly from a Public Domain work, as this could qualify as plagiarism.