Legal Question in Intellectual Property in New York

Re: copyright searches

There are various copyright clearance firms and some copyright lawyers who provide this service (with or without legal opinion on the state of title).

You can do a limited search on the website of the U.S. Copyright Office yourself if you have some information on the work in question but it is far from what you might need or want to be reasonably sure of the rights you or third parties may have in the work.

Speaking of which, how far you need to go in a copyright search depends on your position in a transaction (are you buying or selling, acting as licensor or licensee ?). If you obtained rights from someone else through copyright assignment, license agreement or another type of contract, you would begin by asking the counterparty to give you some history of the work along with evidence of previous copyright transfers.

Finally, if there's evidence that the work is already in public domain, the search may not need to be as detailed as to past history. It sounds like you want to know if the film you acquired is in public domain. Note that you may have to clear music contained in the film as well as certain other elements separately as different rules may apply.

The above reply is in the nature of general information, is not legal advice and should not be relied on as such.