January 1, 2026 is Public Domain Day: Works from 1930 are open to all, as are sound recordings from 1925!; Center for the Study of the Public Domain, December 2025

Jennifer Jenkins and James Boyle, Center for the Study of the Public Domain; January 1, 2026 is Public Domain Day: Works from 1930 are open to all, as are sound recordings from 1925!

"CC BY 4.0

Please note that this site is only about US law; the copyright terms in other countries are different.[2]

On January 1, 2026, thousands of copyrighted works from 1930 enter the US public domain, along with sound recordings from 1925. They will be free for all to copy, share, and build upon.[3] The literary highlights range from William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying to Agatha Christie’s The Murder at the Vicarage and the first four Nancy Drew novels. From cartoons and comic strips, the characters Betty Boop, Pluto (originally named Rover), and Blondie and Dagwood made their first appearances. Films from the year featured Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, the Marx Brothers, and John Wayne in his first leading role. Among the public domain compositions are I Got Rhythm, Georgia on My Mind, and Dream a Little Dream of Me. We are also celebrating paintings from Piet Mondrian and Paul Klee. Below you can find lists of some of the most notable books, characters, comics, and cartoons, films, songs, sound recordings, and art entering the public domain.[4] After each of them, we have provided an analysis of their significance. At the end of the article, we explain:

Why all of this matters
How do copyright and trademark law apply to characters?
What is the impact of the long copyright term?
What are the basic rules for determining whether something is public domain?
Conclusion"

Government's AI consultation finds just 3% support copyright exception; The Bookseller, December 15, 2025

 MAIA SNOW, The Bookseller; Government's AI consultation finds just 3% support copyright exception

"The initial results of the consultation found that the majority of respondents (88%) backed licences being required in all cases where data was being used for AI training. Just 3% of respondents supported the government’s preferred options, which would allow data mining by AI companies and require rights holders to opt-out."

I called my recipe book Sabzi – vegetables. But the name was trademarked. And my legal ordeal began; The Guardian, December 4, 2025

 Yasmin Khan, The Guardian ; I called my recipe book Sabzi – vegetables. But the name was trademarked. And my legal ordeal began

"Vegetables, in my experience, rarely cause controversy. Yet last month I found myself in the middle of a legal storm over who gets to own the word sabzi – the Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Persian, Dari and Pashto word for cooked veg or fresh greens. It was a story as absurd as it was stressful, a chain of delis threatened me with legal action over the title of a book I had spent years creating. But what began as a personal legal headache soon morphed into something bigger, a story about how power and privilege still dominate conversations about cultural ownership in the UK.

When the email first landed in my inbox, I assumed it must be a wind-up. My editor at Bloomsbury had forwarded a solicitor’s letter addressed to me personally, care of my publishers. As I read it, my stomach dropped. A deli owner from Cornwall accused me of infringing her intellectual property over my cookbook Sabzi: Fresh Vegetarian Recipes for Every Day. Why? Because in 2022, she had trademarked the word sabzi to use for her business and any future products, including a cookbook she hoped to write one day.

My jaw clenched as I pored over pages of legal documentation, written in the punitive and aggressive tone of a firm gearing up for a fight. I was accused of “misrepresentation” (copying the deli’s brand), damaging its business and affecting its future growth, and they demanded detailed commercial reports about my work, including sales revenue, stock numbers and distribution contracts – information so intrusive that it felt like an audit. Buried in the legal jargon was a line that shook me. They reserved the right to seek the “destruction” of all items relating to their infringement claim. Reading the threat of my book being pulped was nothing short of devastating. It was also utterly enraging.

Because sabzi isn’t some cute exotic brand name, it’s part of the daily lexicon of more than a billion people across cultures and borders. In south Asia, it simply means cooked vegetables."

(Podcast) The Briefing: What Is Fair Use and Why Does It Matter? (Featured); JDSupra, December 5, 2025

 Richard Buckley, Jr. and Scott Hervey, JDSupra ; (Podcast) The Briefing: What Is Fair Use and Why Does It Matter? (Featured)

"Creators, beware: just because it’s online doesn’t mean it’s fair game. In this episode of The Briefing, Scott Hervey and Richard Buckley break down one of the most misunderstood areas of copyright law—fair use.

In this featured episode, they cover:

- What makes a use “transformative”?

- Why credit alone doesn’t protect you

- How recent court rulings (Warhol v. Goldsmith) are changing the game

- Tips to stay on the right side of the law"

Authors Ask to Update Meta AI Copyright Suit With Torrent Claim; Bloomberg Law, December 12, 2025

 

Kyle Jahner

, Bloomberg Law; Authors Ask to Update Meta AI Copyright Suit With Torrent Claim

"Authors in a putative class action copyright suit against Meta Platforms Inc. asked a federal judge for permission to amend their complaint to add a claim over Meta’s use of peer-to-peer file-sharing unveiled in discovery."

The Disney-OpenAI Deal Redefines the AI Copyright War; Wired, December 11, 2025

BRIAN BARRETT, Wired; The Disney-OpenAI Deal Redefines the AI Copyright War

 "“I think that AI companies and copyright holders are beginning to understand and become reconciled to the fact that neither side is going to score an absolute victory,” says Matthew Sag, a professor of law and artificial intelligence at Emory University. While many of these cases are still working their way through the courts, so far it seems like model inputs—the training data that these models learn from—are covered by fair use. But this deal is about outputs—what the model returns based on your prompt—where IP owners like Disney have a much stronger case

Coming to an output agreement resolves a host of messy, potentially unsolvable issues. Even if a company tells an AI model not to produce, say, Elsa at a Wendy’s drive-through, the model might know enough about Elsa to do so anyway—or a user might be able to prompt their way into making Elsa without asking for the character by name. It’s a tension that legal scholars call the “Snoopy problem,” but in this case you might as well call it the Disney problem.

“Faced with this increasingly clear reality, it makes sense for consumer-facing AI companies and entertainment giants like Disney to think about licensing arrangements,” says Sag."

Disney's deal with OpenAI is about controlling the future of copyright; engadget, December 11, 2025

 Igor Bonifacic, engadget; Disney's deal with OpenAI is about controlling the future of copyright

"The agreement brings together two parties with very different public stances on copyright. Before OpenAI released Sora, the company reportedly notified studios and talent agencies they would need to opt out of having their work appear in the new app. The company later backtracked on this stance. Before that, OpenAI admitted, in a regulatory filing, it would be "impossible to train today's leading AI models without using copyrighted materials."

By contrast, Disney takes copyright law very seriously. In fact, you could argue no other company has done more to shape US copyright law than Disney. For example, there's the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which is more derisively known as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act. The law effectively froze the advancement of the public domain in the United States, with Disney being the greatest beneficiary. It was only last year that the company's copyright for Steamboat Willie expired, 95 years after Walt Disney first created the iconic cartoon."

Disney says Google AI infringes copyright “on a massive scale”; Ars Technica, December 11, 2025

 RYAN WHITWAM , Ars Technica; Disney says Google AI infringes copyright “on a massive scale”

"Disney has sent a cease and desist to Google, alleging the company’s AI tools are infringing Disney’s copyrights “on a massive scale.”

According to the letter, Google is violating the entertainment conglomerate’s intellectual property in multiple ways. The legal notice says Google has copied a “large corpus” of Disney’s works to train its gen AI models, which is believable, as Google’s image and video models will happily produce popular Disney characters—they couldn’t do that without feeding the models lots of Disney data.

The C&D also takes issue with Google for distributing “copies of its protected works” to consumers."

Has Cambridge-based AI music upstart Suno 'gone legit'?; WBUR, December 11, 2025

 

Tiziana Dearing 

Rob Lane

, WBUR; Has Cambridge-based AI music upstart Suno 'gone legit'?

"The Cambridge-based AI music company Suno, which has been besieged by lawsuits from record labels, is now teaming up with behemoth label Warner Music. Under a new partnership, Warner will license music in its catalogue for use by Suno's AI.

Copyright law experts Peter Karol and Bhamati Viswanathan join WBUR's Morning Edition to discuss what the deal between Suno and Warner Music means for the future of intellectual property."

Disney Agrees to Bring Its Characters to OpenAI’s Sora Videos; The New York Times, December 11, 2025

 Brooks Barnes, The New York Times; Disney Agrees to Bring Its Characters to OpenAI’s Sora Videos

"In a watershed moment for Hollywood and generative artificial intelligence, Disney on Thursday announced an agreement to bring its characters to Sora, OpenAI’s short-form video platform. Videos made with Sora will be available to stream on Disney+ as part of the three-year deal...

“The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence marks an important moment for our industry, and through this collaboration with OpenAI we will thoughtfully and responsibly extend the reach of our storytelling,” Robert A. Iger, the chief executive of Disney, said in a statement.

Disney is the first major Hollywood company to cross this particular Rubicon."

EU investigates Google over AI-generated summaries in search results; BBC, December 8, 2025

Liv McMahon , BBC; EU investigates Google over AI-generated summaries in search results

"The Commission's investigation comes down to whether Google has used the work of other people published online to build its own AI tools which it can profit from."

AI firms began to feel the legal wrath of copyright holders in 2025; NewScientist, December 10, 2025

 Chris Stokel-Walker , NewScientist; AI firms began to feel the legal wrath of copyright holders in 2025

"The three years since the release of ChatGPT, OpenAI’s generative AI chatbot, have seen huge changes in every part of our lives. But one area that hasn’t changed – or at least, is still trying to maintain pre-AI norms – is the upholding of copyright law.

It is no secret that leading AI firms built their models by hoovering up data, including copyrighted material, from the internet without asking for permission first. This year, major copyright holders struck back, buffeting AI companies were with a range of lawsuits alleging copyright infringement."

Public Domain Day 2026 Is Coming: Here’s What to Know; Copyright Lately, December 7, 2025

Aaron Moss, Copyright Lately ; Public Domain Day 2026 Is Coming: Here’s What to Know

"Regular observers of copyright law’s favorite holiday know the drill: on January 1, 2026, a new crop of creative works from 1930 (along with sound recordings from 1925) will enter the public domain in the United States—ready to be remixed, recycled, or repurposed into B-grade horror films and ill-advised erotica.

Happy Public Domain Day 2026

This year’s film class is stacked with classics: Howard Hughes’s aviation epic Hell’s Angels(Jean Harlow’s screen debut and, at the time, the most expensive movie ever made); The Big Trail, featuring John Wayne in his first starring role; Greta Garbo’s first talkie, Anna Christie; Bing Crosby’s film debut in King of Jazz; and 1930 Best Picture winner All Quiet on the Western Front. There’s plenty of comedy too, including the Marx Brothers’ Animal Crackers,Laurel and Hardy’s Another Fine Mess, and Soup to Nuts, best remembered for featuring an early iteration of the Three Stooges."

The New York Times is suing Perplexity for copyright infringement; TechCrunch, December 5, 2025

 Rebecca Bellan , TechCrunch; The New York Times is suing Perplexity for copyright infringement

"The New York Times filed suit Friday against AI search startup Perplexity for copyright infringement, its second lawsuit against an AI company. The Times joins several media outlets suing Perplexity, including the Chicago Tribune, which also filed suit this week."

OpenAI loses fight to keep ChatGPT logs secret in copyright case; Reuters, December 3, 2025

 Blake Brittain, Reuters ; OpenAI loses fight to keep ChatGPT logs secret in copyright case

"OpenAI must produce millions of anonymized chat logs from ChatGPT users in its high-stakes copyright dispute with the New York Times and other news outlets, a federal judge in Manhattan ruled.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Ona Wang in a decision made public on Wednesday said that the 20 million logs were relevant to the outlets' claims and that handing them over would not risk violating users' privacy."

Lawsuit or License?; Columbia Journalism Review, December 4, 2025

 KLAUDIA JAŹWIŃSKA, Columbia Journalism Review; Lawsuit or License?

"Today, the Tow Center for Digital Journalism is releasing a tracker that monitors developments between news publishers and AI companies—including lawsuits, deals, and grants—based on publicly available information."

Bannon, top conservatives urge White House to reject Big Tech’s ‘fair use’ push to justify AI copyright theft: ‘Un-American and absurd’; New York Post, December 1, 2025

Thomas Barrabi , New York Post; Bannon, top conservatives urge White House to reject Big Tech’s ‘fair use’ push to justify AI copyright theft: ‘Un-American and absurd’

"Prominent conservatives including Steve Bannon are urging the Trump administration to reject an increasingly popular argument that tech giants are using to rip off copyrighted material to train artificial intelligence.

So-called “fair use” doctrine – which argues that the use of copyrighted content without permission is legally justified if it is done in the public interest – has become a common defense for AI firms like Google, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta and Microsoft who have been accused of ripping off work.

The argument’s biggest backers also include White House AI czar David Sacks, who has warned that Silicon Valley firms “would be crippled” in a crucial race against AI firms in China unless they can rely on fair use protection...

Bannon and his allies threw cold water on such claims in a Monday letter addressed to US Attorney General Pam Bondi and Michael Kratsios, who heads the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy.

“This is un-American and absurd,” the conservatives argued in the letter, which was exclusively obtained by The Post. “We must compete and win the global AI race the American way — by ensuring we protect creators, children, conservatives, and communities.”...

The conservatives point to clear economic incentives to back copyright-protected industries, which contribute more than $2 trillion to the US GDP, carry an average annual wage of more than $140,000 and account for a $37 billion trade surplus, according to the letter...

The letter notes that money is no object for the companies leading the AI boom, which “enjoy virtually unlimited access to financing” and are each valued at hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars.

“In a free market, businesses pay for the inputs they need,” the letter said. “Imagine if AI CEOs claimed they needed free access to semiconductors, energy, researchers, and developers to build their products. They would be laughed out of their boardrooms.”...

The letter is the latest salvo in a heated policy divide as AI models gobble up data from the web. Critics accuse companies like Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and Meta of essentially seeking a “license to steal” from news outlets, artists, authors and others that produce original work."

Court seems dubious of billion-dollar judgment for copyright infringement; SCOTUSblog, December 2, 2025

Ronald Mann, SCOTUSblog; Court seems dubious of billion-dollar judgment for copyright infringement

 "My basic reaction to the argument is that the justices would be uncomfortable with accepting the broadest version of the arguments that Cox has presented to it (that the ISP is protected absent an affirmative act of malfeasance), but Sony’s position seems so unpalatable to them that a majority is most unlikely to coalesce around anything that is not a firm rejection of the lower court’s ruling against Cox. I wouldn’t expect that ruling to come soon, but I don’t think there is much doubt about what it will say."

Two AI copyright cases, two very different outcomes – here’s why; The Conversation, December 1, 2025

 Hayleigh Bosher, Reader in Intellectual Property Law, Brunel University of London , The Conversation; Two AI copyright cases, two very different outcomes – here’s why

"Artificial intelligence companies and the creative industries are locked in an ongoing battle, being played out in the courts. The thread that pulls all these lawsuits together is copyright.

There are now over 60 ongoing lawsuits in the US where creators and rightsholders are suing AI companies. Meanwhile, we have recently seen decisions in the first court cases from the UK and Germany – here’s what happened in those...

Although the circumstances of the cases are slightly different, the heart of the issue was the same. Do AI models reproduce copyright-protected content in their training process and in generating outputs? The German court decided they do, whereas the UK court took a different view.

Both cases could be appealed and others are underway, so things may change. But the ending we want to see is one where AI and the creative industries come together in agreement. This would preferably happen with the use of copyright licences that benefit them both.

Importantly, it would also come with the consent of – and fair payment to – creators of the content that makes both their industries go round."

Sean Combs: The Reckoning review – you can see why the musician is fighting to ban this horrific documentary; The Guardian, December 2, 2025

 Stuart Heritage, The Guardian; Sean Combs: The Reckoning review – you can see why the musician is fighting to ban this horrific documentary

"If its subject gets his way, the new documentary series Sean Combs: The Reckoning might not be available on Netflix for long. On Monday, lawyers on behalf of Combs sent a cease and desist letter to the streamer, demanding that the series be withdrawn based on the inclusion of footage that they claim violates copyright, and involves discussions of “legal strategy that were not intended for public viewing”."