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By India McCarty
It’s a new year, and you know what that means: a whole new collection of characters and stories are entering the public domain!
“I think this is my favorite crop of works yet, which is saying a lot,” Jennifer Jenkins, the director of Duke University Law School’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, told NPR.
Books like the first four Nancy Drew mystery novels, William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon have entered the public domain, as well as the original versions of Betty Boop and Disney’s Pluto.
“That’s not only exciting in itself, but it’s really an opportunity to look back at the history of these two incredible animation studios, Fleischer [who created Betty Boop] and Disney, and how their styles are imprinted in the DNA of today’s cartoons,” Jenkins said. “That’s just a fun rabbit hole.”
Related: These Classic Cartoons, Books and More Enter Public Domain in 2025
Iconic songs like “I Got Rhythm,” “Georgia on My Mind” and “Dream a Little Dream of Me” are also now in the public domain.
This means these works are now free to “copy, share and build on,” without fear of legal repercussion, per the Center for the Study of the Public Domain’s website.
“Copyright gives rights to creators and their descendants that provide incentives to create,” Jenkins said in a 2024 interview with CBS News. “But the public domain really is the soil for future creativity.”
This also means books that might have been out of print can now be published online, while old movies and music recordings can be digitized and uploaded to the internet.
U.S. copyright typically covers 95 years for works published or registered before 1978. For later works, protection covers the creator’s lifetime and 70 years after.
“If copyright lasted forever, it would be very difficult for a lot of creators to make the works they want to make without worrying about being in the crosshairs of a copyright lawsuit,” Jenkins explained.
Speaking to NPR about her excitement for this year’s group of works entering the public domain, she said, “What’s really fun is that people are excited about it — people well beyond our world of copyright lawyers — especially when they start recognizing these works. And for me, one of the most exciting things is when you revisit a work that you loved in a different period of your life and get to look at it again.”
From beloved cartoon characters to classic books, 2026’s group of works entering the public domain are sure to inspire all kinds of exciting new projects!
Read Next: Steamboat Willie, Peter Pan, More Enter Public Domain
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