The Copyright Catastrophe That Made a Major Film Public Domain Upon Release

When an intellectual property enters the public domain it no longer belongs to the original creators, instead, it belongs to, well, everyone. So you can see how a company that makes a movie, or an invention, or a song, wouldn’t want their ideas to just be out there, for everyone, for free. But that’s exactly what happened with one movie, all down to one crucial mistake. 

You probably don’t really ever see it, but if you’ve ever let the credits roll or sat for a post-credits scene, you might have seen a few lines of text and symbols providing copyright information. Turns out, it isn’t just jargon for the sake of looking official. It’s actually completely necessary. Necessary at least before 1978 if you wanted to retain your rights to your own film.

Now Charade was a pretty big movie at the time. It had well-known stars, a wide release, and even netted an Oscar nomination and a BAFTA win. It was not the sort of movie a studio would want to immediately enter the public domain upon release. And yet, a tiny error in that copyright language in the credits that no one pays attention to, meaning that as soon as the film aired, it was in the public domain. So what was the mistake? 

Well, the film actually had all of the appropriate copyright text, except for one crucial thing. The word “copyright.” They had the year of copyright, the rights holder, the declaration of the reservation of rights. They just missed perhaps the most important single word in the whole thing: copyright. And so, as soon as the film aired, it was in the public domain, available to be recorded, distributed, viewed by anyone for free. 

One positive note —  That aforementioned Oscar nomination was for best original song. Luckily, the same rules don’t apply to the music of the movie when distributed outside of the context of the film. So the rights to the original score were retained. Meaning that you can go download the movie right now, for free, and completely legally, but if you just want to listen to the music, you’ll have to buy the soundtrack.