Canadian Copyright Term and Public Domain Flowchart

 

The purpose of the Canadian Copyright Term and Public Domain Flowchart is to aid in determining when the term of copyright expires for a given work.

• Each type of work is represented within one of six branches that make up the full Flowchart. To find out when the term of copyright expires for a work, please follow the chart on the linked page for the corresponding type of content.

 

Notes for using the Flowchart

• Where the term of copyright expires during a given year, a work enters the public domain on January 1st of the following year.
• "Crown author": Under s. 12 of the Copyright Act, "where any work is, or has been, prepared or published by or under the direction or control of Her Majesty or any government department", that work is generally considered to be subject to Crown copyright and to have a Crown author.

• "Fixation": Although this term is not defined in the Copyright Act, it is generally understood to involve the recording of a work on some medium, such as printed transcription, an audio recording, a film or video recording, etc.

 

Download the full Flowchart (06 Nov 2023) as a PDF.

Téléchargez le diagramme complet (06 Nov 2023), disponible en français grâce à l’Université d'Ottawa et Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec.

 

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY)