Monkey selfie belongs to public domain: US Copyright Office

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The United States Copyright Office has said in its verdict on the copyright tussle over the infamous monkey selfie that it belongs to the public domain.

In the first major revision of copyright laws in more than 20 years, the office stated that that works created by animals belong to the public domain and that it cannot register such works in its official records, reported The Washington Post.

The Wikipedia Foundation entered a legal tug-of-war with British Photographer David Slater over a selfie clicked by a monkey in an Indonesian forest in 2011. While Slater claimed that he owned the copyright to the selfie since it was taken with his camera, Wikipedia argued that since copyright protection is not available to animals therefore, it belongs to the public domain.