It is not only in the United States that works and characters were free of copyright at the turn of the year. Since the first day of January, the works of the São Paulo writer and playwright Oswald de Andrade entered the public domain. This means that anyone who wants to stage the famous piece “The King of the Veil”for example, you will no longer have to pay copyright, because access is now free.
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The end of copyright is provided for in Article 41 of Law No. 9,610, published in 1998, it provides that, after 70 years of the death of an author, his works will be open to the public on January 1 of the following year, failing to demand the payment of royalties.
Died in 1954, Oswald is one of the main symbols of the Brazilian modernist movement. At 32, he and Mário de Andrade were creators of the 1922 Modern Art Week. In addition to the play “The King of the Vela”, work such as the public domain “Manifesto of Pau-Brazil poetry“, o “Anthropophagous manifest“; The Book of Poems “The Mangrove Santeiro“And the romance “João Miramar’s sentimental memories”.
Other authors
In addition to him, other authors are also open as open as Getúlio Vargas, Cláudio de Sousa, Roquette-Pinto e Celso Vieirawhich had their editorial catalogs placed in the public domain in 2025.
Lawyer Fábio Pereira, partner of the area of intellectual property Veirano Advogados, comments that, “just as patents have a date of maturity, artistic works also have.”
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According to him, the release, however, does not entitle users to fail to recognize the Creator and protect the integrity of the work. “The opening of copyright does not mean that they will not have to guarantee the author’s moral rights, which are fundamental to the integrity and recognition of their creation,” he says.
Pereira also explains that the right of intellectual property in Brazil is divided between brands and industrial patents, which are recorded at the National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI), and the copyright, which protects artistic works and software, with its sources codes.
“Copyright talks about one’s creations and aims to ensure the creator’s intellectual and exclusivity property, but for a certain time. What no longer happens with a brand, which can have its renewed right from time to time, ”says the lawyer.
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The economic exploitation of a work costs between 5% and 20% of the gain that the person you use has with the sale. The great advantage of the law that allows opening to the public domain is to broaden knowledge about a particular artist, further popularizing his work.
Public domain has a world rule
In 2023, consecrated authors entered the public domain such as Virginia Woolf and Ernest Hemingway. This is because the opening of the works is also valid in other countries. Thanks to the Bern Convention, established in 1880, a series of protections were created for intellectual works for a minimum term of right to the author, 50 years after death.
Most countries are signatory to this agreement, but some have adopted larger deadlines, such as Brazil and the United States, which consider the 70 -year period, when heirs have secured the right to receive royalties on the use of works.
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Currently, some authors have chosen to sell their rights to the work in life, such as the British rock band Pink Floyd, which sold the rights to their music catalog, which includes success as “Wish You Were Here” and “Money” for Sony label for about $ 400 million.
The Queen band would also have negotiated with Sony their catalog for $ 1.27 billion. Finally the deadline is not to pay more royalties, no copyright.
Popeye yes, but without spinach
The turn of the year also marked the entrance to a new page of the world comics. The Popeye character went into public law, just as Mickey had already entered a year earlier.
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“But Popeye with spinach, which he only used years later, will only go into a public domain later,” says Pereira. He adds, however, that in the case of characters, companies can have brand record, which changes everything and guarantees the royalties.
