Monthly Archives: December 2018

Washington, DC, where I’m going for a conference today, is the source of a lot of public domain material.   As noted in an earlier post, “works of the United States government”, regardless of their age, are not subject to copyright … Continue reading →

“In previous years he had let the festival which for centuries had illuminated the marvel of the Maccabees with the glow of candles pass by unobserved. Now, however, he used it as an occasion to provide his children with a … Continue reading →

1923 was a big year for novelty songs.   We’ve already noted “Barney Google”, one of the hits of the year.  On Twitter, Bill Higgins, who recalls his mother singing that song when he was young, reminded me of an even … Continue reading →

“Barney Google, with the goo-goo-googly eyes, Barney Google bet his horse would win the prize. When the horses ran that day, Spark Plug ran the other way! Barney Google, with the goo-goo-googly eyes!” Several novelty songs introduced in 1923 have … Continue reading →

In yesterday’s post, I linked to a law review article that cited a court decision as “755 F.3d 496”.  That’s a kind of citation that pops up a lot both in law review articles, and in court decisions and briefings … Continue reading →

As I noted in yesterday’s post, under US copyright law we sometimes get early works by long-lived authors in our public domain earlier than most other countries do. But we also often have to wait longer for authors’ late works.  … Continue reading →

Few authors have had as longstanding an influence on their genres as Agatha Christie.  In her more than half-century career writing detective fiction, she established (and then often went on to break) many of the expectations of the English “whodunit” … Continue reading →