Antigua and Barbuda

The term comes from Antigua and Barbuda's Copyright Act 2003. When the author of an artistic work is unknown, copyright ends 50 years after the end of the year the work was made, first made available or first published, whichever is latest.¹ Commons applies that rule to anonymous stamps and names a license tag for them.¹² For a work with a known author, the Act runs 50 years from the end of the year the author died.¹ Commons' note on stamps does not extend that second term to stamps with a named designer, so the archive applies it as the general law and answers Likely yes or Likely no for them, or Unclear when a death year is missing.

Antigua was a British colony from the 17th century and became independent with Barbuda on November 1, 1981.¹ Its first stamps arrived in August 1862, printed by Perkins Bacon from a drawing of Queen Victoria by Edward Henry Corbould and engraved by Charles Henry Jeens.³ Leeward Islands stamps were used in Antigua from 1890, and alongside Antigua's own issues from 1903 until 1956. Barbuda had stamps of its own in 1922 to 1924 and again from 1967 to 2000, and uninhabited Redonda from 1979 to 1991.³ Commons' note does not say whether stamps issued under British rule fall under the 2003 Act, and the archive treats that question as open. Because the first stamps credit a designer and an engraver, a record that names them is read under the general term of 50 years after the last death.