Project: Kill

Under the 1909 Copyright Act, works published between 1964 and 1977 were granted automatic renewal, but they still required the inclusion of a valid copyright notice upon publication to secure federal protection. 'Project: Kill' (released in 1976) was distributed without a valid copyright notice in its initial theatrical and home video releases. While many films of this era are protected, this specific title has been widely identified by copyright researchers and public domain distributors as having entered the public domain due to this notice defect. The film appears in numerous public domain catalogs (such as those from Alpha Video and Mill Creek Entertainment) and is hosted on the Internet Archive without takedown notices from any claimant. No copyright registration was filed for this motion picture in the U.S. Copyright Office (CO) within the five-year 'cure' period provided by the 1976 Act for works published with omitted notice. Because it was a domestic US production, it is not eligible for copyright restoration under the URAA (which only applies to foreign works). Search of the Stanford Copyright Renewal Database and the Library of Congress Online Catalog yields no active registrations or evidence of secured rights for this work.