Tintin et Popeyeas well as masterpieces of literature, cinema and music, from Faulkner to Hemingway, Hitchcock, Ravel and Gershwin, all dated 1929, fell into the American public domain on Wednesday January 1, 2025.
Every January 1, thousands of ninety-five-year-old books, films, songs, music, works of art, and comic book characters lose their copyrights in the United States. Which means they can be freely copied, shared, reproduced or adapted without a penny being paid.
In France, the protection of works is different: the author enjoys, throughout his life, the exclusive right to exploit his work. Upon the death of the author, this right persists for the benefit of his beneficiaries during the current calendar year and the seventy years that follow.
In the United States, it is the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at the Faculty of Law of Duke University, in North Carolina (southeast), which makes public each end of December the list of cultural works passed to posterity. On January 1, the stars are the sailor Popeye, created in 1929 by the American Elzie Crisler Segar, and the reporter Tintin, presented by the Belgian Hergé the same year.
“In recent years we've celebrated the entry into the public domain of fascinating characters like Mickey Mouse (2024) and Winnie the Pooh (2022)”, 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“, indicates the lawyer.
The Adventures of Tintin have been adapted for cinema many times, notably in 2011 by Steven Spielberg.
The year 1929 was also that of major works of American and European literature, which entered the American public domain on Wednesday. Thus the works The Sound and the Fury de William Faulkner, Farewell to Arms d’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 has selected Blackmail by Alfred Hitchcock, the first British talking film, and The Black Guardfirst non-silent feature film by American John Ford, both dated 1929.
In song and music, the first version of Singin’ in the Rain by the Americans Ignacio Herbert Brown and Arthur Freed, adapted many times, has also lost its copyright. Just like the famous Bolero by Frenchman Maurice Ravel and An American in Paris by George Gershwin, composed in 1928, but whose copyrights date from the following year.
