Captain Kidd

Captain Kidd (1945), starring Charles Laughton, is a classic example of a mid-century Hollywood production that fell into the public domain due to a failure to renew its copyright. Under the US Copyright Act of 1909, works registered between 1928 and 1963 required a formal renewal filing with the Library of Congress during their 28th year of protection to extend the term to 95 years. A search of the Stanford Copyright Renewal Database and the Library of Congress Catalog of Copyright Entries (CCE) confirms that while the film was originally registered by Benedict Bogeaus Productions on November 27, 1945 (registration number LP13658), no renewal was filed during the 1972–1973 eligibility window. Consequently, the copyright expired at the end of its initial 28-year term. The film's public domain status is widely recognized and documented in secondary authoritative sources, such as the 'Film Superlist: Motion Pictures in the U.S. Public Domain' by D. Richard Baer. This status is further evidenced by the film's ubiquitous presence in the catalogs of public domain distributors like Alpha Video, Simitar Entertainment, and Mill Creek, as well as its availability for unrestricted download on the Internet Archive without copyright challenge.