2028 in public domain

When a work's copyright expires, it enters the public domain. The following is a list of creators whose works enter the public domain in 2028. Since laws vary globally, the copyright status of some works is not uniform.

With the exception of Belarus (Life + 50 years) and Spain (which has a copyright term of Life + 80 years for creators that died before 1988), a work enters the public domain in Europe 70 years after the creator's death, if it was published during the creator's lifetime. For previously unpublished material, those who publish it first will have the publication rights for 25 years. In addition, several other countries in the world have a limit of 70 years. The list is sorted alphabetically and includes a notable work of the creator.

In Bangladesh, India, and Venezuela a work enters the public domain 60 years after the creator's death.

In most countries of Africa and Asia, as well as Belarus, Bolivia, New Zealand, Egypt and Uruguay, a work enters the public domain 50 years after the creator's death.

Spain has a copyright term of life + 80 years for creators that died before 1988. In Colombia and Equatorial Guinea, a work enters the public domain 80 years after the creator's death.

Under the Copyright Term Extension Act, books published in 1932, films released in 1932, and other works published in 1932, will enter the public domain in 2028.^[2][3] Sound recordings that were published in 1927 and unpublished works whose authors died in 1957 will also enter the public domain.^[2]

Among the films that will enter the public domain in 2028 are the original Scarface, Universal Monsters film The Mummy with Boris Karloff, Tarzan the Ape Man with Johnny Weissmuller, Best Picture Academy Award-winner Grand Hotel, Josef von Sternberg's Shanghai Express with Marlene Dietrich, Ernst Lubitsch's Trouble in Paradise, The Music Box starring Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, Katharine Hepburn's film debut A Bill of Divorcement, Shirley Temple's film debut The Red-Haired Alibi, the earliest Looney Tunes short films that were still under copyright when the Copyright Renewal Act of 1992 was implemented such as Ride Him, Bosko!, Horse Feathers with the Marx Brothers, Tod Browning's Freaks, Carl Theodor Dreyer's Vampyr, Alfred Hitchcock's Number Seventeen, the John Ford films Air Mail and Flesh (the latter of which was co-written by William Faulkner), Frank Capra films Forbidden and American Madness, Jean Renoir's Boudu Saved from Drowning, Yasujirō Ozu's I Was Born, But..., the first Mexican sound film Santa, the first Egyptian sound film Sons of Aristocrats, the first Marathi language sound film and oldest surviving Indian film Ayodhyecha Raja, and Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphony cartoons released in 1932, including Flowers and Trees (the first cartoon produced in Technicolor) and Mickey's Revue with the first appearance of Dippy Dawg, the character who would later become Goofy.

Examples of important literary works entering the public domain include Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, William Faulkner's Light in August, Samuel Becket's Dream of Fair to Middling Women, Graham Greene's Stamboul Train, Ernest Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon, Zelda Fitzgerald's Save Me the Waltz, John Steinbeck's The Pastures of Heaven, Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot detective novel Peril at End House, T. S. Eliot's unfinished work Sweeney Agonistes, John Dos Passos's Nineteen Nineteen, Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House in the Big Woods, Hardy Boys novel While the Clock Ticked, Nancy Drew novels The Clue in the Diary and Nancy's Mysterious Letter, the first three volumes of Mikhail Sholokhov's And Quiet Flows the Don in its original Russian, the full album version of Herge's Tintin in America and the first serialized pages of Cigars of the Pharaoh (originally titled Tintin in the Orient, and introducing the earliest incarnations of the villain Rastapopoulos and the twin detectives Thomson and Thompson) in their original French unedited black-and-white versions, W. E. Johns’ first Biggles-collection The Camels Are Coming, and the first editions of literary magazine Scrutiny. The first appearances of the villain Bluto in E. C. Segar's Thimble Theatre and Robert E. Howard's first Conan the Barbarian short story The Phoenix on the Sword were both already in the public domain as their copyrights were not properly renewed.

Important artworks entering the public domain include Pablo Picasso's Nude in a Black Armchair and Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, Oskar Schlemmer's painting Bauhaus Stairway, Otto Dix's triptych The War, Henri Matisse's mural The Dance II, David Alfaro Siqueiros' fresco América Tropical, Diego Rivera's Detroit Industry Murals, Alberto Giacometti's sculpture The Palace at 4 a.m., Man Ray's photograph Larmes and some of the earliest professional photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson including Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare and Hyères, France and the first version of the font Times New Roman.

Among the better-known songs entering the public domain are "Try a Little Tenderness", "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" and "Love Is the Sweetest Thing". Jimmy Kennedy's lyrical adaptation of Teddy Bears' Picnic will also become public domain in the US in 2028.

• List of American films of 1932
• 1932 in literature
• 1932 in music
• 1957 in literature and 1977 in literature for deaths of writers
• Public Domain Day
• Creative Commons
• 2029 in public domain

• Media related to Undelete in 2028 at Wikimedia Commons
• "Authors by Year of Death – 1957". AuthorAndBookInfo.com.
• Popular Books of 1932 at Goodreads