Public domain refers to material or intellectual property that is not subject to private ownership rights and may be used by the public without permission. It is distinct from material that is merely publicly accessible online, which may still be protected by copyright or other rights.
Public Domain (PD) is broadly defined as "elements of IP [intellectual property] that are ineligible for private ownership and the contents of which any member of the public is legally entitled to use." It means something other than "publicly available," such as information found on the internet, which can be "publicly available but not in the public domain from an IP perspective" (World Intellectual Property Organization, 2020, p. 10).