Silver on the Sage

Silver on the Sage, a Hopalong Cassidy western starring William Boyd, was released by Paramount Pictures in 1939. Under the Copyright Act of 1909, works published between 1928 and 1963 required a copyright renewal in their 28th year to maintain protection. The film was originally registered for copyright by Paramount Pictures Inc. on March 31, 1939 (registration number LP8747). A search of the Stanford Copyright Renewal Database and the Library of Congress Catalog of Copyright Entries (CCE) reveals no renewal filed for this specific title. Paramount, which produced the early Hopalong Cassidy films, famously failed to renew the copyrights on many of the entries in the series, leading several Boyd films from the late 30s and early 40s to fall into the public domain. Because the 28-year window for renewal (1966-1967) passed without a filing, the film's US copyright expired. The film is widely distributed today by public domain labels such as Alpha Video and is available on the Internet Archive without restriction.