Mean Johnny Barrows

Under the Copyright Act of 1909 (as modified by the 1976 Act for years 1964–1977), films from this era were granted automatic renewal but required a valid copyright notice on US release prints to secure protection. Mean Johnny Barrows is widely documented as having been released without a proper copyright notice in its initial US theatrical and home video iterations. This oversight was a common issue for independent productions in the mid-1970s, as the failure to include a valid notice (symbol/word, name, and year) in the title sequence resulted in the work falling into the public domain immediately upon publication. The film's public domain status is supported by its inclusion in numerous 'budget' and public domain-oriented DVD collections (such as those from Mill Creek, BCI Eclipse, and Westlake Entertainment) which typically rely on expired or defective copyright status for their business models. Furthermore, a search of the US Copyright Office online database (covering 1978–present) shows no registration record for this title that would indicate a post-publication 'cure' of the missing notice, and no original registration from the 1976 window was located in the Catalog of Copyright Entries (CCE).