Winnie the Pooh to Enter the Public Domain in 2022
1st January 2022
A new year is almost upon us, which means a number of milestones and new changes in the pop culture landscape. Among them is the updates to the United States public domain, which often gets new intellectual properties due to the specifics of the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998. The current rules will allow for works from 1926 to enter the public domain after a 96-year extension in 2022 — and that will include some significant names. Among them is A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh short story collection, and all of the characters within them (except for Tigger, who wasn’t introduced until 1928 and will be under copyright until 2024). Once Winnie the Pooh enter the public domain, it can legally be shared, performed, reused, repurposed, or sampled without permission or additional cost.
This only applies to the original works, and not to the subsequent adaptations and merchandise, which allows for Disney’s incarnation of Winnie the Pooh to still be held under trademark by Disney.
The 2022 crop of public domains additions will also include Felix Saten’s Bambi, a Life in the Woods, Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, Dorothy Parker’s Enough Rope, Langston Hughes’ The Weary Blues, T. E. Lawrence’s The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Kahlil Gibran’s Sand and Foam, Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Aykroyd, Edna Ferber’s Showboat, William Faulker’s Soldier’s Play, Willa Cather’s My Mortal Enemy, D. H. Lawrence’s The Plumed Serpent and H. L. Mencken’s Notes on Democracy.
Unless, of course, the forces of The Great Mouse get another copyright extension passed.
(KA-CHING!)