Public domain works must be out of copyright in both the United States and in the source country of the work in order to be hosted on the Commons. If the work is not a U.S. work, the file must have an additional copyright tag indicating the copyright status in the source country.

Note that this applies only if a reliable source is cited to indicate that the author is not publicly known; just not knowing who the author is is not enough to qualify the image as public domain. This image may not be in the public domain in countries other than Switzerland.

Ceci ne s'applique que si une source de confiance est citée et indique que le nom de l'auteur est effectivement inconnu du public; le simple fait de ne pas savoir qui est l'auteur ne suffit pas pour que l'image soit dans le domaine public selon cette règle. Cette image peut ne pas être dans le domaine public dans d'autres pays que la Suisse.

This applies to Australia, the European Union and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 70 years.

You must also include a United States public domain tag to indicate why this work is in the public domain in the United States. Note that a few countries have copyright terms longer than 70 years: Mexico has 100 years, Colombia has 80 years, and Guatemala and Samoa have 75 years, Soviet Union has 74 years for some authors. This image may not be in the public domain in these countries, which moreover do not implement the rule of the shorter term. Côte d'Ivoire has a general copyright term of 99 years and Honduras has 75 years, but they do implement the rule of the shorter term.