Cheers for Miss Bishop

Under the Copyright Act of 1909, works published between 1928 and 1963 required a renewal filing with the Copyright Office during the 28th year of their first copyright term to remain protected. 'Cheers for Miss Bishop' was originally registered for copyright on February 21, 1941, under registration number LP10294 by Richard A. Rowland Productions, Inc. Research of the Stanford Copyright Renewal Database, the Penn Library Catalog of Copyright Entries (CCE), and David Pierce’s 'Motion Picture Copyrights and Renewals 1950-1959' indicates that no renewal was filed in 1968 or 1969. Because the copyright was not renewed, the film entered the public domain in the United States upon the expiration of its first 28-year term in 1969. Film Superlist (Hurst/Baer) also confirms the lack of renewal for this title. The film’s public domain status is further corroborated by its wide availability from numerous budget distributors (such as Alpha Video) and public domain repositories like the Internet Archive, without legal challenge from the original production entity or its successors. The music score by Edward Ward was also evaluated, but the audiovisual work as a whole passed into the public domain due to the failure to renew the underlying motion picture registration.