When recorded US film copyright terms end

Every 1 January a year's worth of US copyright terms end. Until now those were films from before 1931. From 2027 the renewed studio films of the 1930s begin to arrive, and the record names them.

These are registry entries and term-end calculations from the US copyright record. A term ending is not clearance of every right in a film: restored foreign copyrights, music, and underlying works are outside this record, as the scope note says.

3,733 renewed entries reach the end of their term in 2027 to 2031

A renewed US film copyright runs 95 years from the year its term began and ends on the 1 January after, so a renewed term that began in 1931 ends on 1 January 2027. Each bar counts catalog entries, which are records rather than films: a feature, a short, a serial, or a television series with many episodes is one entry each.

Bar chart: renewed catalog entries whose 95-year US copyright term ends each 1 January from 2027 to 2059. About 750 a year through the 2030s, rising past 2,000 a year in the mid-2050s, where television programmes registered as motion pictures inflate the count. — Renewed catalog entries whose US term ends each 1 January, 2027–2059, from the Catalog of Copyright Entries and the Copyright Office's renewal records. Films from before 1931 are not shown: every one is out of term, but the record does not say when each left, since most were never renewed and left after 28 years. 14 renewed entries with an unresolved registration are left out. The fall at the right is the registry's thinner parse of 1962–63, not a fall in film output.

Selected examples, matched to the record

From the registry's list of notable titles, each matched to a renewed registration. A renewal match speaks to the US copyright in the film itself, not to every right in it; the dossier for each says what the record does not settle.

1 January 2027: Dracula, Frankenstein, City Lights, The Public Enemy and more
1 January 2028: Scarface, Freaks, Grand Hotel, The Mummy and more
1 January 2029: King Kong, Duck Soup, 42nd Street, Dinner at Eight and more
1 January 2030: It Happened One Night, The Thin Man, The Gay Divorcee, Imitation of Life and more
1 January 2031: Top Hat, Bride of Frankenstein, A Night at the Opera, Mutiny on the Bounty and more
1 January 2032: Modern Times, Swing Time, After the Thin Man, Anthony Adverse and more
1 January 2033: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, The Awful Truth, Lost Horizon, A Damsel in Distress and more
1 January 2034: Bringing Up Baby, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Alexander's Ragtime Band, Angels with Dirty Faces and more
1 January 2035: The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Stagecoach, Babes in Arms and more
1 January 2036: The Grapes of Wrath, The Philadelphia Story, Rebecca, Abe Lincoln in Illinois and more
1 January 2037: Citizen Kane, The Maltese Falcon, Dumbo, Babes on Broadway and more
1 January 2038: Casablanca, Bambi, Cat People, Holiday Inn and more

The list runs five years ahead on the upcoming term ends page, and a calendar carries one event a year.

What became of each year's films

For every year a term began, 1912 to 1963, the record sorts the entries four ways. Terms that began before 1931 have all ended. For works whose term began 1931 to 1963, copyright continued past the 28th year only if the owner renewed it; failure to renew ended protection after the initial term, and a renewal extends it to 95 years. "No renewal located" means this registry found no matching renewal in the record: it does not establish that none exists, and the method page reports how often the parse is found to miss one. The unresolved band is where the printed record could not be read or matched.

Stacked bar chart of catalog entries by the year their term began, 1912 to 1963, split into term ended, no renewal located, renewed, and unresolved. Before 1931 every entry is out of term; from 1931 on roughly a third to a half of each year's entries were never renewed. — Catalog entries by the year the term began and what the record says became of them. 1962 and 1963 are parsed more thinly than earlier years so far, which is why the last bars are short.

What the charts do not cover. US record only. Foreign works whose copyright was restored in 1996 are not modelled, and neither are rights in underlying works, music, or performances. Counts are catalog entries with the status this registry assigns; each entry's dossier shows the evidence. Nothing here is legal advice.

Charts are regenerated from the database by scripts/timeline_chart.py; the data behind them is at /timeline/data.json.