Is Jigsaw (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 LP2158 in 1949, with no renewal in the 1976, 1977 or early 1978 volumes.
The renewal sections for 1976, 1977 and January to June 1978 were searched by title, by LP2158 and by claimant. The only Jigsaw entries in them belong to a 1976 MGM television series.
Other March 1949 features were renewed in March 1976, and United Artists renewed Cover-Up as R645341, so the window was being worked.
Franchot Tone stars, and the film is known for its walk-on appearances by Marlene Dietrich, Henry Fonda and John Garfield.
The register, as it stands
- Original registration
- LP2158, Tower Pictures, 11 March 1949
- Renewal fell due
- 1976–1978
- Renewal found
- none
- 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
- Catalog of Copyright Entries, cumulative Motion Pictures 1940–1949, and the AFI Catalog, for LP2158.
- Catalog of Copyright Entries, Motion Pictures 1976 and 1977, and the January–June 1978 volume.
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.