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Copyright and Old Advertisements?

I've recently inherited my great-grandmother's collection of old magazines. Many titles, like Movie Weekly and Punch, have folded. Others like Vogue, Time, and National Geographic are still being published. Several volumes are from the early 1900s through 1930s, and I think the old images and advertisements are really interesting as history and art, and would like to put them on a blog or some kind of website to share them. But I'm concerned about copyright issues.

I understand that copyright has expired for any photos published prior to 1923, but does that also apply to ads, such as an old Lysol spread in Punch magazine from 1920? Would I be infringing on any copyrights by posting these images for free public sharing?

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  • 8 years ago
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    I'm not a lawyer and or a copyright expert, but I would think that copyright laws apply the same way to all graphic works. Thus advertisements would have expired just as photos have. I find a lot of advertisements around the web from later than 1920, for that matter. I doubt you'll have any problem sharing the 1920 ads and I would not hesitate to do so myself. While copyrights are always a consideration, web use of magazine graphics are rarely an issue with copyright holders unless the graphic is being sold for profit in some way.

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