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### Understanding Public Domain Works in the UK

Hello, I will try to keep this simple, as answers I’ve found online lack consistency and reading from gov.uk doesn’t feel quite clear enough.

Are works that were created and published in the US, which are now public domain there, also public domain here and what is the criteria for that? This has been on my mind a lot this year since the internet ran wild with the idea of Mickey Mouse being public domain. I understand the differences in how our own system works, 70 years from the death of the last living writer/director/composer of a given work, but reading from the “Foreign works” section of this page on gov.uk, there’s this:

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However, in most cases the UK does not provide protection to foreign works, where the protection in the country of origin has ended.

That’s promising, but not a clear cut go-ahead with the key phrase being “in most cases”, in what cases is this different? Could you – in the UK – make and publish your own version of Mickey Mouse or one of his contemporaries? The public domain discussion is very US-centric online (as are most things it seems) and I’d love to know more about how we handle international works put into certain terms.

And if this differs from area to area, I’m personally from Scotland.

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EDIT: Further things picked out from this reply:

Section 13B of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, which refers to the copyright duration for film and was last updated December 31st 2020, reads:

“Where the country of origin is not the United Kingdom and the author of the film is not a national of the United Kingdom, the duration of copyright is that to which the work is entitled in the country of origin, provided that does not exceed the period which would apply under subsections (2) to (6).”

Section 15A defines the country of origin, dictating that if it was first published in a Berne Convention country but no others that are a part of it, its country of origin is legally the one that is a part of the Berne Convention. Where that gets more complicated is that if “simultaneously” (a period defined as 30 days if I’m reading correctly elsewhere) released in multiple Berne Convention countries, the UK copyright period is used if the UK is one of them, or the one with the shortest term if it isn’t.

Therefore, if a work – in this case a film – was first released in the US but not the UK within 30 days, it is considered public domain here when it enters the public domain in the US, or when it does so in another Berne Convention country it was released in during that timeframe with a shorter term.

Is this all an accurate understanding?

From there, I have two new questions:

1. The US was not actually a part of the Berne Convention until 1989, is determination of country of origin done retroactively under those rules, or is it decided by what countries were and weren’t in it by the time of release? I imagine the latter.
2. Is there any reliable way to find out if and when older works first released here? Given those entering the public domain now date back to the 1920s, it’d be nice to know.

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