The False Alarm

The film 'The False Alarm' (often colloquially referred to as 'False Alarm') was released in 1934 by Majestic Pictures, a 'Poverty Row' studio. Under the Copyright Act of 1909, works published between 1928 and 1963 required a renewal filing in the 28th year of their first copyright term to remain protected. A search of the Stanford Copyright Renewal Database and the Library of Congress Catalog of Copyright Entries (CCE) shows no renewal record for this title. While the film was originally registered (LP4981 on October 22, 1934), the failure to renew the copyright in 1961 or 1962 caused the work to expire and enter the public domain. This is consistent with the film's presence in various public domain film catalogs and its availability through distributors that specialize in unrestored public domain content, such as Alpha Video and various archive.org community uploads.