The first incarnations of the Belgian reporter and the sailor with unparalleled strength, created in 1929, can now be copied, shared, transformed or adapted on American territory, without this opening the way to copyright for rights holders.
After Winnie the Pooh in 2022 and Mickey Mouse in 2024, two other comic strip monuments are entering the American public domain this Wednesday, January 1. Now aged 95, Tintin and Popeye will enter this first day of 2025 into the circle of copyright-free cultural works in the United States, announced the Center for the Study of the Public Domain of Duke University Law School in North Carolina. Which means that they can be freely copied, shared, reproduced or adapted without a cent being paid to the rights holders (for Tintin, this is the Casterman editions and the Tintin companyimagination formerly Moulinsart).
Use restricted to the United States only
Every year, thousands of works of art, films, songs, music, books and comic book characters enter the American public domain, and thus lose their copyright, 95 years after their creation. “In recent years we have celebrated the entry into the public domain of fascinating characters like Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh,” recalls the director of the Center, Jennifer Jenkins, on her site. “In 2025, copyrights expire for more incarnations of Mickey dating back to 1929 and early versions of Popeye and Tintin”specifies the lawyer. RTBF, which devotes an article to this change, notes however that, for non-American authors, this change will only apply across the Atlantic. Which means that a possible film based on Tintin in the Land of the Soviets and made in the United States should continue to pay rights in Europe, where the character is protected until 2054.
The young Belgian reporter created by Hergé and the sailor with extraordinary strength drawn by Elzie Crisler Segar enter the inner circle of the public domain.
The year 2029 was also that of major works of American and European literature, adapted several times for cinema. the sound and the fury de William Faulkner, Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, a Room of one’s own by the British Virginia Woolf, or the first English translation of In the West, nothing new by the German Erich Maria Note. On the cinema side, Duke University retains Blackmail by Alfred Hitchcock, the first British talking film, and the Black Guard, by the American John Ford. In song and music, another giant, the Bolero by Maurice Ravel, one of the most performed orchestral works in the world, just like the first version of Singin’in the Rain by the Americans Ignacio Herbert Brown and Arthur Freed, adapted many times, also lost their copyrights.
In France, where the entry into the public domain of a work takes place 70 years after the death of its author, it is the paintings of the painters Frida Kahlo and Henri Matisse which are making the switch this January 1, 2025. It is also the case of the photographs of Robert Capa and the novels of Colette.
