A Helping Paw

The film 'A Helping Paw' (1941) is a 20th Century Fox release produced by Terrytoons. Under the US Copyright Act of 1909, works published between 1928 and 1963 required a copyright renewal filing in the 28th year of their first term to maintain protection. Failure to renew resulted in the work entering the public domain. A search of the Stanford Copyright Renewal Database and the Library of Congress Catalog of Copyright Entries (CCE) reveals no renewal registration for this specific title. While Terrytoons/Viacyom (the successor in interest) renewed many cartoons from this era, a significant number of 1941 releases were overlooked or intentionally allowed to expire. This cartoon is consistently listed in reliable public domain film databases and the 'Film Superlist' by David Pierce as having a lapsed copyright. Because it was not renewed within the mandatory window, it is in the public domain in the United States.