Is Detour (1945) public domain?
The copyright record for this film, written out in full so you can check it.
Public domain in the United States
What is usually said
Public domain, never renewed.
The finding, and the working behind it
Public domain in the United States: registered LP13599 in 1945, and the PRC library around it was demonstrably swept for renewals while this title was left behind.
The word “detour” does not appear anywhere in either the 1972 or the 1973 motion picture volume.
What makes that strong rather than merely negative is that the PRC library was demonstrably being swept in exactly that window. National Telefilm Associates, which had acquired the PRC catalog, filed a run of PRC renewals in August 1973: Stagecoach Outlaws, Dangerous Intruder, Flaming Bullets, Apology for Murder, Border Bad Men, Club Havana, Arson Squad, Frontier Fugitives, The Enchanted Forest, Fighting Bill Carson.
The renewed numbers run densely through the L135xx and L136xx range — L13589, L13590, L13591, then a gap where 13599 would be, then L13601, L13602, L13604. Somebody went through this stretch of the register title by title and left Detour behind. A gap in a sequence that was being worked is worth more than any number of empty searches.
The register, as it stands
- Original registration
- LP13599, (C) P. R. C. Pictures, Inc., 7 November 1945
- Renewal fell due
- 1972–1973
- Renewal found
- none
- Searched
- 2026-09-01
The copy you have probably seen is somebody else’s restoration
The well-known 4K restoration is the Academy Film Archive’s work and is their property. The 1945 film being free says nothing about a particular restoration of it. Any copy we work from has to be one we can account for.
How to check this yourself
Everything above is drawn from public records. None of it requires our word:
- The Catalog of Copyright Entries, the Copyright Office’s printed registration and renewal volumes, scanned and searchable at the Internet Archive and at the Online Books Page. Registration numbers beginning LP or MP are film entries.
- The Copyright Office online records at copyright.gov, which are complete from 1978 and therefore decisive for any renewal that fell due from then on.
- The NFPF Field Guide to Sponsored Films, for the industrial and educational titles, which records copyright status entry by entry.
Where these numbers came from
- Catalog of Copyright Entries, Motion Pictures 1972 and 1973, read in full for the renewal sequence around L13599.
What this does and does not mean
This is a finding about United States copyright, made in good faith from the public record. Copyright terms differ by country, and a film in the public domain here may still be protected elsewhere.
A negative search proves that no record was found, which is not identical to proving that no record exists. The Copyright Office says as much about its own catalogs. Where a search could not be decisive we say so above rather than rounding it up to certainty.
This is a record of research and not legal advice. If you hold a right in this film, or you think we have read the record wrong, write to mike@tapeterritory.com with what we missed and we will correct it here.
Watch it
Detour (1945) is free to watch here, with no account and no advertising.
Why we did this research
Establishing what may be published is the first step before restoring a film and writing an audio description for it. That is what this site is for, and we do the same work on commission — audio description and captioning, with published rates.