Image: Bringing up baby publicity photo

Description: Cropped publicity photograph for the 1938 film Bringing Up Baby, featuring Katharine Hepburn and Nissa the leopard. Such images were taken on set during filming, or as part of an organized photo-shoot (see Film still). They were then disseminated to the public to promote the film.
Title: Bringing up baby publicity photo
Credit: Image found on this page, where it can clearly be seen as part of a photo shoot (direct link to full image)
Author: RKO Radio Pictures, exact photographer unknown
Permission: There is no evidence that RKO Radio Pictures claims, or ever claimed, copyright on this image: it does not contain the copyright symbol ©, the word "Copyright", or the abbreviation "Copr." A number of film production experts have commented on the staus of these images, cofirming that they are in the public domain. Eve Light Honathaner, in The Complete Film Production Handbook (Focal Press, 2001 p. 211.), says: "Publicity photos have traditionally not been copyrighted. Since they are disseminated to the public, they are generally considered public domain, and therefore clearance by the studio that produced them is not necessary." Nancy Wolff, includes a similar explanation: "There is a vast body of photographs, including but not limited to publicity stills, that have no notice as to who may have created them." (The Professional Photographer's Legal Handbook By Nancy E. Wolff, Allworth Communications, 2007, p. 55.) Film industry author Gerald Mast, in Film Study and the Copyright Law (1989) p. 87, writes: "According to the old copyright act, such production stills were not automatically copyrighted as part of the film and required separate copyrights as photographic stills. The new copyright act similarly excludes the production still from automatic copyright but gives the film's copyright owner a five-year period in which to copyright the stills. Most studios have never bothered to copyright these stills because they were happy to see them pass into the public domain, to be used by as many people in as many publications as possible." This work is in the public domain because it was published in the United States between 1923 and 1963 and although there may or may not have been a copyright notice, the copyright was not renewed. Unless its author has been dead for the required period, it is copyrighted in the countries or areas that do not apply the rule of the shorter term for US works, such as Canada (50 pma), Mainland China (50 pma, not Hong Kong or Macao), Germany (70 pma), Mexico (100 pma), Switzerland (70 pma), and other countries with individual treaties. See Commons:Hirtle chart for further explanation. Deutsch | English | español | français | italiano | 日本語 | 한국어 | македонски | português | português do Brasil | русский | українська | +/−
Usage Terms: Public domain
License: Public domain
Attribution Required?: No