The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy

This film (originally titled 'La momia azteca contra el robot humano') was produced in Mexico in 1958 and imported to the US by K. Gordon Murray. Under the copyright laws in effect at the time, foreign works required a US copyright notice upon publication in the United States and a subsequent registration/renewal to maintain protection. While the film was dubbed and distributed extensively in the US, no record of a US copyright registration or renewal exists in the Stanford Copyright Renewal Database or the Library of Congress Catalog of Copyright Entries for this title or its English translation. Furthermore, the film failed to qualify for automatic copyright restoration under the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA) in 1996. For a foreign work to be restored, it must have been under copyright in its source country on the restoration date (January 1, 1996). Because the Mexican production company (Cinematográfica Calderón) did not maintain the necessary formalities or the work had entered the public domain in Mexico prior to 1996, it remained in the public domain in the US. The film is widely cited in 'Film Superlist' and by PD distributors like Alpha Video as being in the public domain, and it has been distributed freely for decades without copyright enforcement.