How Long Does Copyright Last? A Country-by-Country Breakdown

A photographer named Tom shot a series of street portraits in 1998. He died in 2007. His daughter found the negatives in 2023 and wondered whether she could sell them as prints. The answer depended on where she lived. In her case (Toronto, Canada), it depended on which version of Canadian law applied to a 1998 photo. The answer was yes, she owned them, and they’d be in copyright until 2077.

If she’d been in Mexico, the answer would have been later. In the US, the same. In Iran, different rules entirely.

Copyright duration is one of those topics where everyone has half the picture, and the half they have is usually wrong for at least one country they care about. Here’s the actual breakdown.

The default rule almost everywhere

The Berne Convention sets a minimum term: the life of the author plus 50 years after their death. Most countries that signed the treaty have gone further. The most common rule today, used by the US, EU, UK, Brazil, Australia, India, Türkiye, Russia, and roughly 100 other countries, is life of the author plus 70 years.

If you’re an individual creator and you make a work tomorrow, in most of the world that work will be in copyright until 70 years after your death. For a 35-year-old creator with a normal lifespan, that’s well over a century of protection.

This is much longer than copyright used to be and much longer than most people think.

Country-by-country breakdown

The numbers vary by what kind of work it is, when it was made, and whether the country signed certain treaties. Here’s how the major jurisdictions handle individual-author works (the most common case for working creators).

Country / Region	Standard term	Notes
United States	Life + 70 years	Sonny Bono Act of 1998 set this. Works for hire: 95 years from publication or 120 from creation.
European Union	Life + 70 years	Harmonized across all EU member states.
United Kingdom	Life + 70 years	Set by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 as amended.
Canada	Life + 70 years	Increased from life + 50 to life + 70 in December 2022 under USMCA obligations.
Mexico	Life + 100 years	One of the longest terms in the world.
Japan	Life + 70 years	Increased from life + 50 in December 2018 under the CPTPP.
Australia	Life + 70 years
Brazil	Life + 70 years
India	Life + 60 years	Below the Berne minimum because it took a 1948 grandfather.
China	Life + 50 years	Berne minimum.
Russia	Life + 70 years
South Africa	Life + 50 years
Türkiye	Life + 70 years
Iran	Life + 50 years	Iran is not a Berne signatory, so reciprocity is limited.
Saudi Arabia	Life + 50 years
Egypt	Life + 50 years
New Zealand	Life + 50 years	Will increase to life + 70 by 2034 under trade agreements.
Argentina	Life + 70 years
Singapore	Life + 70 years

The pattern: most economically significant copyright markets have moved to life + 70 over the past 30 years, often through trade agreement obligations. A few large markets (China, India) sit at shorter terms.

What happens after the term ends

When copyright expires, the work enters the public domain. Anyone can copy, sell, perform, adapt, or build on it without permission and without paying royalties.

This is why you can buy a Pride and Prejudice paperback for $4 (Jane Austen died in 1817), why you can stream A Christmas Carol on YouTube for free (Charles Dickens died in 1870), and why every conceivable Sherlock Holmes pastiche exists now (almost all original Doyle works are public domain in most countries, though the US situation was complicated until recently).

For a deeper look at how this works and which works are currently free, see our piece on public domain.

The corporate and work-for-hire rules

Things change when the author isn’t an individual. For corporate-authored works, anonymous works, or works for hire, the calculation switches from “life of the author” (which doesn’t apply when there’s no human author) to a fixed-term-from-publication or creation rule.

United States:

• Works for hire: 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation, whichever ends first
• Anonymous and pseudonymous works: same as works for hire (95/120)

European Union:

• Anonymous or pseudonymous: 70 years from publication
• Corporate authors: typically 70 years from publication or creation

United Kingdom:

• Computer-generated works: 50 years from creation
• Crown copyright (government works): 50 years from publication, 125 years from creation if unpublished

For working creators, the practical consequence is: if you signed a work-for-hire contract, you’re not the copyright owner under the standard rules. The employer or commissioning party is, and the duration is calculated from publication, not from your lifespan.

When the clock starts

The rule is “from the death of the author” in most jurisdictions, but this raises an obvious question: from January 1 of the year of death, or from the exact date? Almost every jurisdiction simplifies this by counting from the end of the calendar year. So if an author died on March 15, 2020, the copyright in their works expires on December 31 of the year that’s 70 years later (December 31, 2090, in most life + 70 jurisdictions).

This is why public domain entries happen in batches every January 1. The whole world of works by authors who died exactly 70 years ago enters the public domain at midnight on New Year’s Day.

For corporate works calculated from publication, similar end-of-year rounding applies in most jurisdictions.

Works for joint authors

When two or more people created a work together, copyright runs until 70 years after the death of the last surviving author in most jurisdictions. This applies to co-written books, co-composed songs, films with credited co-writers, and other collaborations.

The practical effect: works by groups can stay in copyright much longer than works by individuals. The Beatles’ songs, jointly authored by Lennon and McCartney for the most part, won’t enter the public domain in life + 70 jurisdictions until 70 years after Paul McCartney dies, regardless of John Lennon’s earlier death in 1980.

What this means for working creators

For someone making creative work today, the duration question almost never comes up in practice. The works you create now will be in copyright until the next century. The thing you actually have to worry about is what happens during your lifetime, not 70 years after it.

The more relevant questions:

• Can you prove you authored your work on a specific date?
• Can you defend it if someone copies you?
• Have you registered it where you need to (US Copyright Office for US litigation, online services for fast timestamp proof)?

For everything in our main copyright guide, the duration is the easy part. The hard part is proof during the years it matters.

Edge cases worth knowing

A few situations break the standard rules in ways that occasionally trip people up.

Pre-1978 US works. Anything copyrighted in the US before January 1, 1978 follows older rules, with different terms based on whether the work was registered, renewed, and so on. This is why the public domain in the US looks weirdly patchy for early 20th century works. The post-1978 system is the life + 70 setup most of the world uses.

Photographs in the EU. Some EU jurisdictions have a separate, shorter category for “non-original photographs” (snapshot photos lacking artistic creativity), which can have terms as short as 50 years from creation. The standard life + 70 applies to original photographic works.

Sound recordings. Separate from the musical composition copyright. Sound recordings typically have shorter terms (often 50 to 70 years from publication in many jurisdictions), even when the underlying composition is still in copyright. This is why some performances of public-domain compositions are themselves still in copyright.

Restored copyrights. Some countries have restored copyrights that had previously expired (the US did this for certain foreign works under the URAA in 1994). If you’re working with older works, check whether anything has been restored.

Government works. US federal works are not subject to copyright at all. UK government works have Crown copyright with its own rules. EU member states vary. If you’re using government materials, the rules are different from anything in this article.

The practical advice

Don’t memorize a table. Three things to remember:

1. In most major countries, copyright lasts your entire lifetime plus 70 more years. You don’t have to worry about your work going out of copyright in your lifetime.

2. The duration is set when the work is created and based on the law of the country where you’re seeking protection. The same work has different terms in different countries.

3. The complicated cases (works for hire, joint authors, pre-1978 US works, sound recordings) have their own rules. If your work involves any of these, look up the specific rule for your jurisdiction rather than guessing.

For the international framework that makes this work across borders, see our piece on the Berne Convention.

The duration is the easy part of copyright law. The hard part is what happens while it’s running. That’s where you spend your effort.