Angel and the Badman

Angel and the Badman was originally registered for US copyright by Republic Pictures Corporation on February 24, 1947, under the registration number LP932. Under the Copyright Act of 1909, works registered between 1928 and 1963 required a manual renewal filing with the US Copyright Office during the 28th year of the first term to extend protection for a second term. A thorough search of the Stanford Copyright Renewal Database and the Library of Congress Catalog of Copyright Entries (CCE) reveals no renewal filing for this title. Republic Pictures famously allowed the copyright for this film to expire by failing to renew it in 1974 or 1975. As a result, the film entered the public domain in the United States on the first day of its 29th year following publication. Because the work was a US production and the copyright owner failed to comply with the mandatory renewal requirements of the time, the film is definitively in the public domain. This status is widely recognized by film historians and is the reason the film is ubiquitous on budget home video labels and various free streaming platforms.