A Night in a Dormitory

The film 'A Night in a Dormitory,' featuring Ginger Rogers, was released in early 1930 by Tiffany Productions. Under the Copyright Act of 1909, works published between 1928 and 1963 required a renewal filing with the US Copyright Office during the 28th year of their first copyright term to remain protected for a second term. A search of the Stanford Copyright Renewal Database and the relevant volumes of the Catalog of Copyright Entries (CCE) reveals no renewal registration for this title. Furthermore, 'Film Superlist: Motion Pictures in the U.S. Public Domain (1894-1939)' by D. Richard Baer confirms that this title entered the public domain due to non-renewal. Because the original copyright holder, Tiffany Productions, went bankrupt in 1932 and its assets were liquidated/scattered, many of its titles fell into the public domain through administrative neglect of renewal filings. The film is currently widely available through public domain distributors and archive sites without copyright challenge.