The Nativity

The film 'The Nativity' (1910), directed by J. Searle Dawley for the Edison Manufacturing Company, is definitively in the public domain in the United States. Under current US copyright law (17 U.S.C. § 304), all works published or registered before January 1, 1928, have seen their copyright terms expire. As a production from 1910, its maximum potential term of protection—even if it had been properly registered and renewed under the 1909 Act—would have lasted only 75 years from publication (expiring in 1985) or was eventually extended to 95 years by the 1976 and 1998 Acts. However, the hard cutoff for all works published prior to 1928 has passed. Consequently, the film entered the public domain on January 1, 1986, at the latest.