Why do so many songs sound alike? In the latest episode of Legal Brief, Professor Jennifer Jenkins breaks down the challenges of applying copyright law to music, from the limits of musical vocabulary to the fine line between inspiration and infringement.

Can an artist's style be copyrighted? In this week’s episode of Legal Brief, Professor Chris Buccafusco explains why courts are divided on whether an artist’s style can be protected and how the emergence of generative AI is raising new questions about where copyright draws the line between idea and expression. ⚖️🎨

#dukelaw #copyright

In 2025, movies and cartoons from 1929 entered the US public domain. That was the year that sound films took over and there were some incredible dance sequences capitalizing on the enthusiasm for synchronized sound. Here are some of the moves from 1929.

To read more about the public domain, visit: https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/

Happy Public Domain Day 2025 from Duke Law School's Center for the Study of the Public Domain. To read more about the public domain, visit: https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/

In 2025, a dozen Mickey Mouse cartoons from 1929 enter the public domain. See how Disney brilliantly used public domain music in them. To read more about Public Domain Day 2025, visit https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2025/

A graphic novel covering 2000 years of musical borrowing and regulation, from Plato to rap, by James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins. Available at https://law.duke.edu/musiccomic/

Public Domain Day, which falls on January 1st, is intended to be a celebration of copyright expiration, a day when notable works enter the public domain. In 2014, Public Domain Day in Canada saw the writings of Robert Frost, W.E.B. Du Bois, C.S. Lewis, Sylvia Plath, and Aldous Huxley became public works, free for anyone to use and build upon. However, because of copyright extensions passed by the U.S. Congress, no published works entered the U.S. public domain in 2014, and nothing will until 2019.

Copyright expert and scholar David Nimmer discussed current developments in U.S. copyright law and how they push us in unanticipated directions when he delivered the annual Meredith and Kip Frey Lecture in Intellectual Property. Among other matters, he explored the potential for recent Supreme Court decisions to upset a large body of jurisprudence, and whether "The Cloud" might push the law in the opposite direction.

A preview of Public Domain Day 2025 from Duke Law School's Center for the Study of the Public Domain.

To read more about the public domain, visit https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/