A Trap for Santa Claus

The film 'A Trap for Santa Claus', directed by D.W. Griffith for the Biograph Company, was released on December 20, 1909. Under U.S. copyright law, all works published or registered before January 1, 1928, have entered the public domain due to the expiration of their maximum copyright term (95 years at the time the 1998 Extension Act was applied, though effectively all pre-1928 works are now clear). As a 1909 production, its copyright would have been subject to the 1909 Copyright Act, requiring a 28-year initial term and a 28-year renewal. Regardless of whether Biograph filed for renewal, the maximum possible protection for a work from 1909 expired decades ago. The film is widely available in public domain archives and is cited by the Library of Congress and the AFI Catalog as a historical short from the silent era.