Dementia 13

Dementia 13 was released in 1963 and was originally registered for US copyright by Alta Vista Productions on September 25, 1963 (registration number LP26839). Under the copyright laws in effect at the time (the 1909 Act), works registered between 1928 and 1963 required a formal renewal filing with the US Copyright Office during the 28th year of their first term to extend protection to a second term. A search of the Stanford Copyright Renewal Database, the Library of Congress Catalog of Copyright Entries (CCE), and the Film Superlist (Hurst) reveals no record of renewal. The 28-year window for renewal expired at the end of 1991. Because the Copyright Renewal Act of 1992 only granted automatic renewals for works published between 1964 and 1977, films from 1963 that failed to renew entered the public domain. The film's public domain status is widely documented by film historians and legal databases. Director Francis Ford Coppola has publicly acknowledged the film's status in several interviews, and it is frequently distributed by companies specializing in public domain titles, such as Alpha Video and Mill Creek Entertainment, without legal challenge from the original production entity or its successors (American International Pictures/Orion).