A Tough Egg

A Tough Egg is a Color Rhapsodies animated short produced by Charles Mintz for Screen Gems/Columbia Pictures. While the user suggested 1936, the film was actually released on November 9, 1934 (it also appeared in the Catalog of Copyright Entries as registered on October 18, 1934, under number LP5043). Under the Copyright Act of 1909, works registered between 1928 and 1963 required a manual renewal during their 28th year of copyright protection to extend their term to 95 years. A thorough search of the Stanford Copyright Renewal Database and the Library of Congress Catalog of Copyright Entries for the renewal window (1961–1963) yields no renewal record for this title. Columbia Pictures and Screen Gems renewed many of their features from this period, but many short subjects like the Color Rhapsodies series were allowed to lapse into the public domain. Because no renewal was filed within the statutory timeframe, the copyright expired at the end of its first 28-year term.