Shoot to Kill

The film 'Shoot to Kill' was released by Screen Guild Productions in 1947. Under the Copyright Act of 1909, works published between 1928 and 1963 required a renewal filing with the US Copyright Office in the 28th year of their first term to maintain copyright protection. For a 1947 release, the renewal window would have been in 1974 or 1975. A search of the Stanford Copyright Renewal Database and the Library of Congress Catalog of Copyright Entries (CCE) indicates that no renewal was filed for this motion picture. While Screen Guild and its successor, Lippert Pictures, frequently renewed their higher-profile titles, 'Shoot to Kill' was allowed to lapse. This lack of renewal is further corroborated by its inclusion in 'Film Superlist: Motion Pictures in the U.S. Public Domain (1940-1949)' by D. Richard Baer, which lists the film as having entered the public domain due to non-renewal. Because the film was a domestic US production and the mandatory renewal was not performed, the work fell into the public domain in the United States upon the expiration of its initial 28-year term in 1975. The film is currently widely available through public domain distributors and archive sites without copyright challenge.