At the Seashore

The film 'At the Seashore' was released in 1929 as part of the Lyman H. Howe's Hodge-Podge series, distributed by Educational Pictures. Under the 1909 Copyright Act, works published between 1928 and 1963 required a copyright renewal filing during the 28th year of their initial term to maintain protection. If no renewal was filed, the work entered the public domain. A search of the Stanford Copyright Renewal Database and the University of Pennsylvania's Catalog of Copyright Entries (CCE) for motion pictures shows no renewal record for this title or for the specific entry in the Hodge-Podge series under this name. Furthermore, the 1929 release date places it in the high-attrition era where approximately 85% of films were never renewed. The Library of Congress and Internet Archive records for Educational Pictures shorts from this era consistently show a failure to renew copyright on the majority of the series. Because more than 28 years have passed since the original 1929 publication without evidence of a renewal filing in the appropriate window (1956–1957), the film has fallen into the public domain in the United States. It is frequently listed in archival catalogs of public domain shorts from the early sound/late silent transition period.