Good sources of public domain IP?

I do not know of any good public domain stuff but I never knew Alice in Wonderland and Wizard of Oz are public domain!

Any idea if you can create the characters like the ones in the movies or do the movies have some sorta 'adaption' copy write?

 

You have to stay well away from the movie versions. Which isn't exactly difficult if you've read the source material.

(Well, at least, it's easy to stay away from the most popular movie versions. There have been an awful lot of adaptations of both Oz and Alice, so you're likely to end up similar to some of them accidentally.)

 

Ah ok, thanks for clearing that up.

 

Peter Pan's a big exception to the copyright rule. It's rather complicated and the complications further depend on what side of the pond you're on. It boils down to JM Barrie leaving the rights to Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital and due to the unique nature of that the rights have been granted several extensions. Great Ormond Street does chase up people who use the IP though so unless you have high powered lawyers, (such as Disney does), I'd stay clear. (There's sites out there with a much more indepth discussion of the issue. Even Wikipedia has a run down on it.)

 

In EU area, e.g., in Finland copyright is granted automatically and you do not need (c), so the film might be in public domain or might not be depending on the local legislation.

 

The movie was made before such copyright laws existed.

 

haha. how about "king kong" you know that stuff has been dealt with.

 

And the list of PD music : http://www.pdinfo.com/index.php


About the copyright law (USA):

* Works created after 1/1/1978 - life of the longest surviving author plus 70 years - earliest possible PD date is 1/1/2048
* Works registered before 1/1/1978 - 95 years from the date copyright was secured.
* Works registered before 1/1/1923 - Copyright protection for 75 years has expired and these works are in the public domain.


Also, AFAIKarodies and tributes can void the copyright law.

The real problem are the lawyers, for example Tetris patent expired years ago but still there are lawyer trying to suck blood out from clones.

 

Don't know how excited players would be to be a man that lives in a cabin he built... I guess the building process would be interesting, going to the store to get all the supplies etc. For the most part of the book examining bubbles frozen in the lake doesn't seem like much fun