The Kiss

This film, also known as 'The May Irwin Kiss' or 'The Rice-Irwin Kiss,' was produced by Thomas Edison's company and directed by William Heise in April 1896. As a US production released prior to the current 1928 threshold for copyright protection, it has definitively entered the public domain under US law. The 95-year maximum term for works published with copyright notice prior to 1978 would have expired in 1991 at the latest, assuming it was even registered under the laws of the time. However, all works published in the United States before January 1, 1928, are now in the public domain regardless of their original registration or renewal status. The film is widely cited by the Library of Congress and the National Film Registry as a seminal public domain work.