Is He Walked by Night (1948) 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 LP2291 in 1948, and the Pathe Industries library was being renewed across exactly that window without this title.
The phrase “walked by night” does not occur in the 1975, 1976 or 1977 volumes. Three years were read rather than two, because a renewal falling in 1976 sits in the blind spot between the printed volumes and the online catalog.
And Pathe Industries was being renewed across exactly that window: Canon City, The Tioga Kid and In This Corner in the 1975 volume, Shamrock Hill in the 1976 volume. The library was live and somebody was working it.
Neighbors in the L22xx range were renewed in 1976 and 1977 — L2274 below, L2294 above — with 2291 absent between them.
The register, as it stands
- Original registration
- LP2291, (C) Pathe Industries, Inc., 13 November 1948
- Production
- An Eagle-Lion release, a Bryan Foy production
- Renewal fell due
- 1975–1976
- Renewal found
- none, across three volumes
- Searched
- 2026-09-01
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 1975, 1976 and 1977, read for the renewal sequence around L2291 and for Pathe Industries as claimant.
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.
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.