The Prowler

The film was released in 1951 and registered for copyright by Horizon Pictures, Inc., on June 18, 1951, under registration number LP1000. Under the Copyright Act of 1909, works registered between 1928 and 1963 required a manual renewal with the US Copyright Office during their 28th year of protection to extend copyright into a second term. A search of the Stanford Copyright Renewal Database and the Library of Congress Catalog of Copyright Entries (CCE) reveals no renewal record for this motion picture. For a 1951 registration, the renewal window would have been in 1978 or 1979; however, no such filing was made by Horizon Pictures, the director Joseph Losey, or any successor in interest. As a result of this failure to renew, the copyright expired at the end of its first 28-year term. Because the film fell into the public domain prior to the 1996 URAA restoration acts (which only apply to foreign works and not domestic US productions), its status as public domain is permanent. This is corroborated by its inclusion in various public domain film catalogs and its presence on the Internet Archive without takedown claims from major studios.