Creative works of art in the public domain can be freely used by anyone. A work falls in the public domain if copyright on a work has expired, or if it is waived by for example a CC0 (Creative Commons Zero) dedication.
The flowcharts below help you to determine if copyright or a related right on a certain work protected by copyright has expired. Due to differences in National legislation a separate flowchart is needed per jurisdiction.
The flowcharts below are updates of previous version of the same flowcharts from 2011. Please have a look on the page ‘Public Domain Calculators (2011)‘ if your jurisdiction is not available below.
History
The first iteration of the Public Domain Calculator was developed as part of the Europeana Connect project coordinated by the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek. EuropeanaConnect (May 2009 – October 2011) was a Best Practice Network funded by the European Commission within the area of Digital Libraries of the eContentplus Programme. A new version of the Public Domain Calculators was developed as part of the Europeana Awareness project coordinated by the Europeana Foundation.
The current version is maintained by Maarten Zeinstra (IP Squared) to make this research and a version of the previously developed tools available for anyone to build upon.