Warning: the following is not to be construed as legal advice. Instead, it should be looked upon as a general overview of what public domain law is and how it can work to your advantage.

Many business owners would be hard-pressed to describe what the “public domain” is. However, it’d be beneficial for them to know exactly what it means and how they can benefit from works included in it. Public domain works are those with expired copyrights and those that have copyright eligibility. These works don’t belong to anyone, so they can be used by the public.

Many people find using work in the public domain to be advantageous. Why? Because no one has to ask for permission to use the works and no one can charge fees to use the works. Creatively, people can quote from the works and create derivative works from them without infringing the law.

Sounds great, right?

But you really have to be careful when attempting to use works in the public domain.

Not all work is considered in the public domain. Revisions and translations for example, may be covered by copyright law. Moreover, copyright and public domain laws vary between countries. These factors may contribute to a business owner finding that he is illegally using copyrighted work if he doesn’t do his research.

Is it public domain or not?

Determining whether a work is in the public domain won’t be totally easy, but there are some guidelines you can follow to help you figure out if it is.

Ask yourself this:

- Can it be described as an idea or fact?

- Did it come from the U.S. government? Was the writer a government employee?

- Is it tied to science theories, principles, laws or math formulas?

- Is it a research method, statistic method or an education process?

- Is the works a word, proper name, symbol, sign, number, language rule or punctuation

- Has the works failed to renew its copyright

- Has it exceed its expiration date?

If you can answer “yes” to any of these questions, then the work is in the public domain.

But that’s not all.

Works created before 1923 are in the public domain.

However, works that were published after 1923 have different rules attributed to them. Here are some rules that can help you quickly determine if what you have is something that you can use.

Works published without a notice during between 1923 and March 1, 1989 is in the public domain.

Works published without a notice and registration between 1978 and March 1, 1989 are in the public domain.

Works published between 1923 and 1963 that haven’t had their copyright renewed are in the public domain.

All published and unpublished works after March 1, 1989 are not in the public domain and are protected by copyright for 70 years after the death of the author.

So there you have it. Now that you know how to determine what works you can use, you can start using them in a way to help your business!