Is Night Tide (1961) public domain?
The copyright record for this film, written out in full so you can check it.
The film is public domain. The score is not
What is usually said
Public domain.
The finding, and the working behind it
No renewal exists for the film, but the score was renewed as RE0000418480, and the original registration could not be found.
There is no renewal registration for the film. We checked the full renewal set for "night tide" across all classes, not only motion pictures, and the window a 1961 film falls in is inside the online catalog’s complete coverage.
This is nevertheless the weakest evidence on any page here, and the reason is worth stating plainly: we could not locate the original registration number for the picture. No registration, no recorded assignment, nothing in the catalog but the music. We are therefore proving a negative without having pinned down the thing being searched for, which is a weaker argument than any other on this site. The cumulative Motion Pictures catalogs, which supplied the original number for several other titles, did not produce one here either.
We would want that number found before treating this one as settled.
The register, as it stands
- Original registration
- not located, in the catalog or the cumulative volumes
- Renewal for the picture
- none, across all classes
- Score renewal
- RE0000418480, registered 9 January 1989
- What the score renewal renews
- EU0000688240, 25 September 1961
- Score claimant
- Jimmy Bond, as author
- Searched
- 2026-09-01
The score was renewed, and most good copies are somebody’s restoration
RE0000418480, registered 9 January 1989: "Night tide. m Jimmy Bond", renewing EU0000688240 of 25 September 1961, claimed by Jimmy Bond as author. The same structure as The Screaming Skull, and the same live exposure.
This film has also had legitimate restoration and disc releases, so most of the good-looking copies in circulation are somebody’s restoration rather than the 1961 picture. That is a separate problem from the copyright in the film, and it has to be answered separately.
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
- Copyright Office public catalog, score renewal RE0000418480.
- Copyright Office public catalog, all renewal classes searched for "night tide".
- Catalog of Copyright Entries, cumulative Motion Pictures 1960–1969 (archive.org Motionpict19601969librrich0013).
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.