Chinese Jinks

Chinese Jinks is an animated short film from the 'Tom and Jerry' series (the humans, not the cat and mouse) produced by the Van Beuren Corporation and released through RKO Radio Pictures in 1932. Under the Copyright Act of 1909, works published between 1928 and 1963 required a renewal filing with the US Copyright Office during the 28th year of their first term to maintain protection for a second term. A search of the Stanford Copyright Renewal Database and the Library of Congress Catalog of Copyright Entries (CCE) shows no renewal record for this title. While most Van Beuren cartoons were registered for an initial term, the vast majority fell into the public domain because the studio was liquidated in the late 1930s and renewals were not systematically filed by successors like Commonweath Pictures or Official Films during the late 1950s and early 1960s. The film is widely available on public domain compilation sets (such as Mill Creek and Alpha Video) and archive.org, which is consistent with a failure to renew.