A number of questions have come up recently about the deceptively simple term "public domain."  In the old days, cooperative extension publications were often (but not always) distributed with no restrictions on duplication and no formal statement of copyright.  Some folks have said that they were in the public domain.

That term really doesn't apply to what we do in ANR anymore.  Materials produced in the course of your program assignment are copyrighted by the Regents of the University of California.  Assuming that what you've done is copyrightable in the first place, (your grocery list is not!) the copyright exists from the moment the work is set down in some fixed form.  If you have an idea for an educational video at lunch with a colleague and you write the creative script for the opening scene on a napkin, the copyright exists.

Simple answer?  The term public domain has little relevance to what we do.

On the other hand, copyright has huge relevance and is a complex topic.  There is an excellent resource with lots of links at the UC Davis copyright web site at http://ucanr.org/ucdcopyright .

Also, help is available from my office and from our most generous colleague, Jan Carmikle in UCD Innovation Access.  (copyright@ucdavis.edu)