Is Impact (1949) 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 LP2266 in 1949, with the registrations either side of it renewed and this one passed over.
The bracket here is as tight as this method ever gets. The renewed L22xx numbers in the 1976 and 1977 volumes run L2256, L2258, L2264, then a gap where 2266 would be, then L2267, L2273, L2274.
L2264 was renewed. L2267 was renewed. L2266 was not. That is the Scared to Death pattern from the first research pass, and it is the strongest form of evidence this method produces — not an absence, but an absence inside a run of presences.
The word “impact” does occur in those volumes, but only in phrases like “front end impact” and “impact energy absorbing bumper”, which are industrial films. Cardinal Pictures appears nowhere.
The register, as it stands
- Original registration
- LP2266, (C) Cardinal Pictures, Inc., 1 April 1949 (notice date 1948)
- Production
- Released through United Artists, presented by Harry M. Popkin
- Renewal fell due
- 1976–1977
- Renewal found
- none
- 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 1976 and 1977, read for the renewal sequence around L2266 and for Cardinal Pictures 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.
Watch it
Impact (1949) 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.