The Soul of the Cypress

The film 'The Soul of the Cypress' is a silent experimental short directed by Dudley Murphy and starring his wife, Chase G. Murphy. It was released in 1921, which falls well before the 1928 cutoff for public domain status 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 matter of law. Because the film was published in 1921, its original 28-year term and subsequent renewal terms have concluded. Even if the copyright had been renewed in its 28th year (circa 1949), the maximum possible protection period for works of this era was 95 years from publication, which would have ended no later than 2016. Therefore, the film is definitively in the public domain and available for unrestricted use.