Hi Reader!

As you might know, starting in 2019, works finally started to re-enter the public domain after a 20-year pause.

And that pause was because Disney didn’t want Steamboat Willie (the first iteration of Mickey Mouse) to enter into the public domain.

Disney’s lobbying efforts resulted in that 20-year pause. But as of January 1, 2024, Steamboat Willie has now entered into the public domain along with all works first published in 1928.

Some of these include:

• The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne
• The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie
• Charlie Chaplin’s The Circus
• An American in Paris by George Gershwin

To celebrate, I’ve updated the public domain post with all the latest dates and information.

I wanted to drop this bonus decision tree into your inboxes that will help you decide if a work you want to use is in the public domain (and free to use however you like) or still protected by copyright. (You can download the 2024 Public Domain decision tree here.)

This decision tree starts with the premise that the work is protected by copyright.

And you’ll only change your answer if you can verify that it’s fallen into the public domain through your research.

For your research, you’ll need to answer five questions:

• Was it created within the scope of a U.S. government employee’s job description?
• Is the author alive or dead? If dead, what year did the author die?
• Is the work published? If so, what was the year of first publication?
• Was the work first published with a copyright notice?
• Was the copyright renewed?

You can head over to the Public Domain blog post to get more context to these questions along with the rest of the 2000+ word guide I put together on the public domain.

Chat soon,

P.S. I hope you have had a great start to your new year! If an LLC is on your legal to-do list for 2024, then make sure you grab a copy of my book to help you create it. Don’t have a legal to-do list yet? The Legal Roadmap helps you create a personalized one, that will help you save time and money and only focus on those legal tasks that will help you achieve your business goals.

❤️ Easy to understand legal resources should be available to every creative, regardless of their financial situation. If one of my resources has helped you and you would like to say “thank you”, you can make a contribution here. ❤️