The beneficiaries of Hergé dispute that Tintin in the land of Soviets is in the public domain in the United States

The beneficiaries of the designer Hergé challenged on Friday that his first album, Tintin in the land of Soviets, entered the public domain in the United States, where he was only translated 60 years later. Comics, published from January 1929 in the Belgian newspaper The little twentieth, is one of the works that American academics estimated in the public domain on January 1, 2025.

The public domain study center of the Duke University Faculty of Law, North Carolina, publishes a list each year. This time it concerned the creations of 1929. The United States had this particularity of protecting the works only during the 95 years following their publication, without consideration of the date of the death of the author.

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“Far from being decided”

But the Hergé Foundation disputes the schedule put forward by the University. « Duke applied a 95 -year copyright protection period from the first publication » et « based on the date of first publication in Belgiumexplains a press release from the Foundation. However, according to other sources, including American, the duration of copyright in the United States should run from the date of the first publication on their territory (…) The question is therefore far from being trench. »»

Before seeing Tintin appear in the United States, Hergé had to wait until 1959, the year when Golden Press published four albums at the same time. For them Sovietsthe first English translation is even more recent: it dates from 1989, with a British publisher. In many other countries, such as in Europe or Canada, Tintin remains entirely protected by copyright until January 1, 2054, 70 years after Hergé’s death in March 1983.

In Tintin in the land of Sovietswhere the reporter goes to Moscow, Hergé portrays the communist regime installed by the 1917 revolution as violent and corrupt. It is one of the least known albums in the series, signed by an author aged 22 only when he invents the character who will make his reputation.

Hergé’s rights holders are his widow Fanny Vlamynck, 90, and her second husband, Nick Rodwell, 72, delegate CEO of the company that publishes Tintin’s albums.