Public domain

Definitions of the boundaries of the public domain in relation to copyright, or intellectual property more generally, regard the public domain as a negative space, that is, it consist of works that are no longer in copyright term or were never protected by copyright law.

More subtle definitions of the public domain move beyond those works that no longer receive legal protection under intellectual property law and incorporates all aspects of works which are not covered by the intellectual property doctrine, such as insubstantial parts of a copyrighted work or the statutory defined permitted acts and exceptions to copyright. A less legalistic definition of the public domain comes from Lange, who focused on what the public domain should be: "it should be a place of sanctuary for individual creative expression, a sanctuary conferring affirmative protection against the forces of private appropriation that threatened such expression".