Public domain | EPFL Graph Search

Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?

Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of GraphSearch.

The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. Because no one holds the exclusive rights, anyone can legally use or reference those works without permission. As examples, the works of William Shakespeare, Ludwig van Beethoven, Leonardo da Vinci and Georges Méliès are in the public domain either by virtue of their having been created before copyright existed, or by their copyright term having expired. Some works are not covered by a country's copyright laws, and are therefore in the public domain; for example, in the United States, items excluded from copyright include the formulae of Newtonian physics and cooking recipes. Other works are actively dedicated by their authors to the public domain (see waiver); examples include reference implementations of cryptographic algorithms, and the image-processing software (created by the National Institutes of Health). The term public domain is not normally applied to situations where the creator of a work retains residual rights, in which case use of the work is referred to as "under license" or "with permission". As rights vary by country and jurisdiction, a work may be subject to rights in one country and be in the public domain in another. Some rights depend on registrations on a country-by-country basis, and the absence of registration in a particular country, if required, gives rise to public-domain status for a work in that country. The term public domain may also be interchangeably used with other imprecise or undefined terms such as the public sphere or commons, including concepts such as the "commons of the mind", the "intellectual commons", and the "information commons". Although the term domain did not come into use until the mid-18th century, the concept can be traced back to the ancient Roman law, "as a preset system included in the property right system".

About this result

This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.

Related publications (1)

Related concepts (74)

Related courses (27)

Related lectures (146)

Related MOOCs (1)

The Role of Compromised Accounts in Social Media Manipulation

Tugrulcan Elmas

In recent years we have seen a marked increase in disinformation including as part of a strategy of so-called hybrid warfare. Adversaries not only directly spread misleading content but manipulate soc

EPFL2022

Bots: Wikipedia Wikification

Delves into the role of bots in Wikipedia, their wikification of public domain content, and the controversies surrounding their use.

Alfresco Formation Overview

Covers setting up Zoom meetings, managing instances on AWS, creating blog posts, managing users and groups, and utilizing advanced search features.

Alfresco Formation: Document Management

Covers the basics of Alfresco document management, including creating sites, managing users and groups, and applying tags.

HUM-122(a): Global issues: communication A

Le cours présente les enjeux mondiaux actuels liés à la communication instantanée et aux médias sociaux. L'approche interdisciplinaire intègre les SHS et les sciences de l'ingénieur et initie au trava

MICRO-563: Project in biomedical technologies

The student applies the acquired skills to an academic or industrial project.

HUM-443: Collective creation: improv-arts & engineering II

Les techniques d'improvisation développées dans les arts vivants (théâtre, musique, danse, performance) sont mises en perspective avec les pratiques de conception en ingénierie. Ce cours enseigné à l'

Find the right markets for your innovation - A tool for entrepreneurs and innovators for choosing which markets to play in.

Learn how to apply the Market Opportunity Navigator - a three-step tool for identifying, evaluating and strategizing market opportunities - to get the most value for your innovation.

Freedom of speech

Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The right to freedom of expression has been recognised as a human right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international human rights law by the United Nations. Many countries have constitutional law that protects free speech. Terms like free speech, freedom of speech, and freedom of expression are used interchangeably in political discourse.

The copyright term is the length of time copyright subsists in a work before it passes into the public domain. In most of the world, this length of time is the life of the author plus either 50 or 70 years. Copyright subsists for a variety of lengths in different jurisdictions. The length of the term can depend on several factors, including the type of work (e.g. musical composition or novel), whether the work has been published or not, and whether the work was created by an individual or a corporation.

Moral rights

Moral rights are rights of creators of copyrighted works generally recognized in civil law jurisdictions and, to a lesser extent, in some common law jurisdictions. The moral rights include the right of attribution, the right to have a work published anonymously or pseudonymously, and the right to the integrity of the work. The preserving of the integrity of the work allows the author to object to alteration, distortion, or mutilation of the work that is "prejudicial to the author's honor or reputation".