It is the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at the Duke University Law School, in North Carolina (southeast), which makes public the list of cultural works passed down to posterity each year at the end of December. This January 1, the stars are the reporter Tintin, presented by the Belgian Hergé in 1929 and the sailor Popeye, created by the American Elzie Crisler Segar the same year.
“In recent years, we have 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 from 1929 and the first versions of Popeye and Tintin,” says the lawyer.
The year 1929 was also that of major works of American and European literature, adapted several times for cinema. “The Sound and the Fury” by William Faulkner, “A 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 Remarque. These legendary novels also enter the American public domain on Wednesday.
On the cinema side, Duke University selected “Blackmail” by Alfred Hitchcock, the first British talking film, and “The Black Guard”, by the American John Ford, both released in 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, also lost its copyright. Just like the extremely famous “Boléro” by Frenchman Maurice Ravel, composed in 1928 but whose copyright dates from the following year.
