Shotgun Law
PUBLIC DOMAIN FYI
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The Night the World Exploded poster
Public Domain

The Night the World Exploded

1957 · Columbia Pictures / Clover Productions · Dir. Fred F. Sears

With his assistant, Laura Hutchinson, Dr. David Conway develops a device to advance the fledgling science of earthquake prediction. After forecasting a large trembleor that will rock California within twenty-four hours, Conway cannot persuade the Governor to act. When the prediction proves true and further tests indicate that there are more quakes to come, Conway and Laura seek to perfect their device. Subsequent tests deep within Carlsbad Caverns discover an unknown element—E-112—that is responsible for the earthquakes and threatens to destroy the globe if it ever reaches the surface. The team determines that with only four weeks until Armageddon, the race is on to neutralize the killer element before it takes a devastating toll.

Confidence
95
— Legal Reasoning —

Why this status applies

The film was released in the United States in June 1957 and was originally registered for copyright by Columbia Pictures Corp. (LP8546; June 1, 1957). Under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1909, works registered between 1928 and 1963 required a manual renewal filing with the Copyright Office during their 28th year of protection to extend copyright into a second term. For a 1957 release, the renewal window occurred in 1984 or 1985. Extensive searches of the Stanford Copyright Renewal Database and the U.S. Copyright Office online records (covering renewals from 1978 onward) show no renewal filing for this title. This is corroborated by the 'Film Superlist: Motion Pictures in the U.S. Public Domain (1950-1959)' by David Pierce and D. Richard Baer, which identifies this film as one of the Columbia/Clover B-movies that entered the public domain due to non-renewal. Consequently, the work fell into the public domain in the United States at the expiration of its initial 28-year term in 1985. Note: generated without live web grounding (the grounded research engine was unavailable). Verify the cited sources independently before relying on this determination.
— Cited Sources —

Supporting facts

  • U.S. Copyright Office Catalog of Copyright Entries (CCE), Motion Pictures 1950-1959
  • Stanford University Copyright Renewal Database
  • Film Superlist: Motion Pictures in the U.S. Public Domain (1950-1959), Vol 3.
  • AFI Catalog of Feature Films
  • IMDb

Research summary based on cited sources, not legal advice. Always consult a qualified copyright attorney before commercial use.