Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that is dedicated to empowering individuals to legally use and re-use creative works through the development and availability of legal tools to supplement copyright globally,.

Creative Commons licensing works with copyright and international property rights to provide legally binding tools for transferring some of the rights for a work from the rights holder to the user.

Materials that are licensed in this way encourage the re-use and re-mixing of works and provide greater public access.

Creative Commons licenses are comprised of several parts:

1. A machine readable license statement - Useful for born-digital items

2. A human readable license statement - Provides clarity for users of your work

3. A lawyer readable license (legal document) - The actual license agreement

As Creative Commons licenses work with copyright, they are not applicable to materials and activities that are not copyrightable.

Such items include:

• Items that fall under other intellectual rights provisions such as trademarks or patents.
• Items that are in public domain
• Uses that are already deemed fair use by copyright law.

While a Creative Commons license is not applicable to public domain materials, if you create  a derivative work from a public domain work, consider applying a CC license.