A House of Cards

The film 'A House of Cards' (alternatively 'The House of Cards'), produced by the Edison Manufacturing Company and released in 1909, is definitively in the public domain in the United States. Under current US copyright law, all works published or registered before January 1, 1928, have seen their copyright terms expire. At the time of its release, the maximum duration of copyright protection was 42 years (an initial 28-year term plus a 14-year renewal), provided the work was properly registered and renewed. Even under the extensions granted by the Copyright Act of 1976 and the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, no work from 1909 remains under protection. The film entered the public domain no later than the end of 1984, regardless of whether it was ever formally renewed.