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Public Domain
Royalty-Fee Intellectual Property

Breaking Into and Succeeding in Public Domain Riches
How to Start a Business Using Public Domain Materials

There are questions pertaining to public domain materials.

Does an intellectual property have to be as ancient as Shakespeare’s Hamlet or Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa to be considered a public domain work?

It does not, fortunately. A work need only have been published before the year 1923 to be considered in the public domain worldwide. And due to lack of copyright renewal many younger works have also become public domain.

Copyright is a relatively recent phenomenon, and by design a limited one. In fact, it's only in the last 25 years the United States has extended copyright protections to last nearly a century--and that move has not been universally lauded. Copyright was created to function primarily as an enticement, not a property.

In order to ensure a constant flow of works into the public domain, authors are given a brief monopoly over use, distribution, and adaptation of their expression. This ensures them a time during which they may see some reward for their effort. But in the end copyrights and other intellectual property protections must expire and the works they protected become available for all.

Currently the United States and much of Europe appear to be losing sight of that original philosophy, and instead have begun to view intellectual property as property in fact. As a global society we seem to be moving towards longer and longer copyright terms. However, individual copyright holders have begun improvising solutions, using such licensing schemes as "copyleft" and Creative Commons to make their work more publicly available and freely distributable without sacrificing their ownership of the works. And these aren't just a crackpot minority.

The podcast edition of James Patrick Kelly's novel, Burn, released under a Creative Commons license, won a Nebula this year. Clearly these new licensing schemes are gaining ground--clearly a significant portion of society still values the public domain and other ways of making our creative heritage available to all.

What legal references are available?

How do I find out what constitutes a “public domain” property? Are there different rules for specific regions, or are their worldwide constants?

There are different rules for different countries. However, you'll find that you mainly only have to concern yourself with the laws of the country in which you wish to publish. Because of several international treaties beginning with the Berne Convention in 1886 and continuing straight up through the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property rights in 1994, most of the nations of the world have agreed to recognize copyright protections on each other's works and extend protections over foreign works just as if they had originated at home.

The terms of the Berne Convention set certain minimums on copyright protections which all signatory countries' laws must conform with, though they can enact laws offering longer and stronger protections if they wish. These treaties don't eliminate the need to research the copyright status of the work you wish to use, but they do make it less of a daunting task.

Currently, the country with the longest period of copyright protection is the United States. This means that if you want to be 99.999% sure you've got a public domain work on your hands, you can go with the rule of 1923: anything published before 1923 is in the public domain. This is because anything with a copyright dating from 1922 or earlier would have had its protections expire under the 75-years-from-publication-date term limit that was in effect just before the U.S. enacted the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act in 1998.

The CTEA added 20 years to that, so you'll next see published works enter the public domain in 2019. Meanwhile, any unpublished work created by an author who died before 1937 will be in the public domain by now as well, calculating from the year 2007 and subtracting the 70 years of posthumous copyright protection that U.S. law currently provides. There are a few exceptions--sometimes a perpetual copyright is granted to exceptional works in exceptional situations--but in general, if it's public domain in the United States, it's going to be public domain world-wide.

So your public domain determine arsenal will mainly consist of the copyright law of the country in which you mean to make use of a work. And, if that country isn't the United States, you'll want to know you way around U.S. law as well--there have been cases of rights holders in the United States threatening publishers in other countries with legal action over "illegal" reproduction of works that the non-U.S. country considers public domain. Seems like the terms of good old Berne would render such threats harmless, but you don't want to be the test case, do you? But never fear--we'll be giving you plenty of web resources you can use to begin researching the laws that apply in your case.

What items are available as public domain properties?

I know about written works like fairy tales and ancient Greek plays, but what other sorts of work are out there? Do the visual and musical arts also end up in the public domain?

Yes! The forms of creative expression that begin copyrighted and end up in the public domain include literary works, musical pieces, screenplays and scripts, pantomime, choreography, artwork both two- and three-dimensional, films and motion pictures, sound recordings, and architectural works. They all start out protected, and all protections expire eventually. Popular songs, famous paintings, beloved plays--they all go through this process.

And some works even begin in the public domain. Because U.S. copyright law excludes works by the U.S. federal government from copyright protection, many recent works are already available for your use and enjoyment. NASA's extensive space image gallery, for instance, is in the public domain.

What can I do with public domain properties?

What derivatives (a.k.a. products) can I make out of them?

Chances are you've already seen many examples already. Audio-books of classic novels read aloud and recorded to keep daily commuters company on their long drives to work, greeting cards, mouse pads, computed desktop wallpaper, and wall-hanging posters displaying reproductions of famous paintings, brand-new performances and adaptations of the music of Mozart and Beethoven, choral adaptations of venerable poetry, and movies based on new interpretations of Shakespeare's plays or the fairy tales that predated him.

Really, the list goes on for as long as your imagination can crank out the examples. It's not for nothing that the public domain is considered a great treasure. It contains no less than the creative heritage of the human race. It feeds scientific and artistic progress, it inspires every new generation, and it is free for everyone to use, enjoy, and adapt whether for commercial or non-commercial purposes. The possibilities available to you are endless.

Now, how much money can you make?

There are many ways to make money out of public domain properties, from T-shirts, mugs, wallpapers, murals, repros, to jewelries with inscriptions.
You can expect to earn a few hundred to millions of dollars depending on the path you take.
Most likely, if you make T-shirts, you can expect to earn at least $1,500 per month based on selling 3 T-shirts per day of $15 per piece.

Need we say more?
This eGuide provides insightful information, advices and tips for anyone who is contemplating to start a public domain-based business with confidence. Numerous hard-to-find resources are included to help you locate pertinent information.

About the Authors

Jennie S. Bev is THE fashion, image and fun careers expert, whose reputation has been acknowledged by prestigious media internationally. She has been profiled and mentioned in Entrepreneur, Teen People, Canadian Business, Home Business, Dong (France), San Francisco Chronicle, The Independent, Daily Southtown, The Arizona Republic, Femina (Asia), and Dewi (Asia).

Editor-in-Chief Jennie S. Bev was named EPPIE Award finalist in Non-Fiction How To category for excellence in electronic publishing. She has published over 40 books and 1,000 articles in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany and Southeast Asia. She is also a college professor based in San Francisco Bay Area.

Co-author Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little is an accomplished author, freelance writer, and web designer from the New Orleans area. She graduated from Metairie Park Country Day School and went from there to the University of Washington to pursue B.A. in English.

Her fiction and essays have been published in a diverse handful of literary and New Age magazines, including PanGaia. An aspiring novelist, she has been an annual participant in National Novel-Writing Month since 2002. She now resides in Colorado.

This 73-page instantly downloadable StyleCareer.com eGuide Breaking Into and Succeeding in Public Domain Riches brings you valuable insider tips, advice and suggestions not available elsewhere to help you embark on this highly lucrative career path.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Myths, the Realities, and the Basics
What is a “public domain” property?
What legal references are available?
What items are available as public domain properties?
What can I do with public domain properties?

Public Domain Legalities
Understanding "Intellectual Property"
What is it?
What kinds of intellectual property laws are there?
Where did the idea of "intellectual property" come from?
Why are some items considered “public domains” and others are not?
Common Misconceptions
"If it's online, it's public domain"
"If it's free, it's public domain"
"If it's ancient, it's public domain"
"Reproduction and derivation is considered 'fair use' under copyright law"
Public Domain: Society's Heritage
International Legalities
Legal Protections on Intellectual Properties: Rights-Holder
Copyright
Patents
Trademarks
Legal Protections On Intellectual Properties: Users Of Public Domain Works
Creative Commons, Copyleft, and Other Licensing Schemes

Intellectual Properties Available as Public Domains
Finding Public Domain Texts
Finding Public Domain Images
Public Domain Artwork, Various Sources
Finding Public Domain Music
Public Domain Information Project (PD Info)
Finding Public Domain Films
Public Domain Movie Torrents
The Moving Image Archive

Creating Products Using Public Domain Works
Using Public Domain Texts
Using Public Domain Images
Using Public Domain Music
Using Public Domain Films

Profile

This eGuide literally saves you hundreds or even thousands of dollars spent on professional workshops and training and hundreds of hours of research. It will help you break into the career of your dream faster without having to repeat the same mistakes that most newcomers do.

We have also included resources on the following:

Where to find public domain materials to use right away
Legal assistance for intellectual property rights
Possible problems

You can have this exclusive eGuide right away by instant download for only $89.95, which you will earn many times over with your first paid job. This special low discount price is reserved for today, Saturday, 07-Nov-2009 08:08:10 PST only. (Regular price: $99.95)

Breaking Into and Succeeding
in Public Domain Riches
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