Is Dr. Sex (1964) 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
Unknown: an obscure film with no paperwork anyone can find.
The finding, and the working behind it
Public domain in the United States: never registered, and every title and credit card in the film was read frame by frame with no copyright notice on any of them.
For a 1964 film, a copyright notice on the print was required. Its absence is the finding here, and the only honest way to establish that is to look at every card rather than sample a few.
The whole opening was read at one frame per second, from the animated “Dr. Sex, by appointment only” card through the title, the cast cards, the crew cards and the writing, production and direction credits. No notice appears on any of them.
An earlier pass on this film checked only sampled frames, and the record said so and called it unsettled. It was then read in full, which is why it now says proven.
The register, as it stands
- Registration found
- none
- Renewal found
- none
- Notice on screen
- none, on any card
- How the opening was read
- one frame per second, 0:00 to 2:24, every card
- Searched
- 2026-09-19
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
- The film’s own opening and closing cards, read frame by frame.
- Copyright Office records, searched for a registration under the title.
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 [email protected] with what we missed and we will correct it here.
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.