January 1 is not only New Year’s Day, but also Public Domain Day, the day each year on which works with expiring copyrights enter the public domain for all to use and replicate. Copyright protection exists for a limited time to balance the goals of protecting the artist’s hard work on the one hand and, on the other, ensuring that the public can benefit from and build on that work. See our Insight “The Public Domain Landscape 2019” and note the distinction between copyrights and trademarks; the latter may persist despite the expiration of copyright. Examples of highly successful uses of public domain works include Wicked: For Good the musical, West Side Story and the new Wuthering Heights film to be released this February.

In 2026, works that were copyrighted in 1930 and sound recordings copyrighted in 1925 are entering the public domain. New works joining the public domain include the film All Quiet on the Western Front, William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, the beloved Betty Boop and Blondie and Dagwood characters, the dog Pluto, the first four Nancy Drew novels, the “Georgia on My Mind” Lyrics, Piet Mondrian’s Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow, the Animal Crackers film starring the Marx Brothers and the sound recording by Marian Anderson of Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen.

Lutzker & Lutzker is available to help you protect your work through copyright registration and guide you in the use of third-party works For further reading from our website on the topics discussed here, see the following Insights and IP Bits & Pieces®: Public Domain Day 2024: Beyond Mickey Mouse, Happy Public Domain Day 2025!, and our Copyright FAQs.