Page 4 - Katten Kattwalk and Kattison Avenue - Winter 2026 - Issue 5

Works Entering the Public Domain

Present Commercial Opportunities

for Retailers and Advertisers —

But Tread Carefully!

By David Halberstadter

any authors, artists, musicians and other
content creators celebrate January 1
as Public Domain Day — the day upon
Mwhich copyright protection for an
entire year’s worth of older works expires. That’s
because these works become freely available to be
incorporated into new works or exploited for
almost any purpose without permission. But Public
Domain Day presents myriad opportunities for retailers,
fashion designers and other advertisers as well.
All copyright-protected works — books, magazine articles, films, musical compositions, sound recordings, comic
books, comic strips, cartoon and other distinctive characters — eventually lose their protection and become
available for the public to use freely. In the United States, works that were published or registered for copyright
protection before 1978 generally have a copyright term of 95 years, meaning that their copyrights expire on
January 1 of the 96th year. Accordingly, works that were first published or registered in 1930 entered the public
domain on January 1, 2026.

There are circumstances under which such works could have entered the public domain earlier than this; for
example, if they were not published with a proper copyright notice or if they were not timely renewed after
an initial term of 28 years. Additionally, the rule is different for works that were authored before 1978 but
never published or registered. The rule is also different for sound recordings, which originally were not eligible

4 katten.com/intellectualproperty