Curated IP rights for Adaptations.

Oldest dispute. Legend has it a 6th-century Irish king ruled on a copied psalter with ‘to every cow her calf, to every book its copy’ — the monk had to hand the copy over.

First statute. Britain's Statute of Anne, 1710, was the first law to grant rights to authors rather than to printers.

Most expensive manuscript. Bill Gates paid $30.8M for Leonardo da Vinci's Codex Leicester in 1994.

Longest wait. 1928's Steamboat Willie spent 95 years under copyright before Mickey Mouse entered the US public domain on 1 January 2024.

Biggest reversal. ‘Happy Birthday to You’ collected licensing fees for decades — until a 2016 ruling found the copyright claim had never actually held up.

Slowest handover. Sherlock Holmes is mostly public domain in the US, but ten 1920s stories kept parts of his character under copyright until 2023.

Strangest patent. US Patent 5,443,036, granted 1995: ‘a method of exercising a cat’ — using a laser pointer.

No known death date. Anonymous and pseudonymous works run on a different clock — often 70 to 95 years from publication instead of from a death no one recorded.

No paperwork needed. Since the 1886 Berne Convention, copyright applies the moment a work is fixed — no registration, no symbol, in most of the world.

Longest term. Mexico grants 100 years after the author's death, among the longest anywhere. The Berne Convention's own floor is just life plus 50.

First trademark. Bass Brewery's red triangle logo was registered in the UK in 1876 — the first mark ever entered under the world's first trademark law.

Longest-running claim. J.K. Rowling drafted the first Harry Potter outline in 1990. It took seven years and twelve rejections before Bloomsbury claimed it.