The Iron Claw

The Iron Claw is a 15-chapter movie serial released by Columbia Pictures in 1941. Under the US Copyright Act of 1909, works published between 1928 and 1963 required a formal renewal with the Copyright Office during their 28th year of copyright to maintain protection. For a 1941 release, the renewal window occurred in 1968–1969. A search of the Stanford Copyright Renewal Database and the Library of Congress Catalog of Copyright Entries (CCE) reveals no renewal registration for this motion picture. While Columbia Pictures was generally diligent in renewing its feature films, many of its serials from this era, including The Iron Claw, were allowed to lapse into the public domain. The 'Film Superlist: Motion Pictures in the U.S. Public Domain' (Hurst/Baer) specifically identifies this title as non-renewed. Because the work was not renewed, its US copyright expired at the end of its first 28-year term, and it entered the public domain on January 1, 1970. It is widely circulated today by public domain distributors such as Alpha Video and is available on the Internet Archive without restriction. Note: generated without live web grounding (the grounded research engine was unavailable). Verify the cited sources independently before relying on this determination.