USPS Media Mail Rules are Arbitrary and Stupid

The United States Postal Service offers a shipping option called Media Mail. Media Mail is a popular way to ship certain types of goods through the mail because it is cheap and offers a tracking number. It is not the fasted form of shipping but many buyers are prepared to wait an extra day or two or three for their package to be delivered. Media Mail allows printed material, books, periodicals, literature, plays, audio and video recordings to be shipped at a reduced rate compared to Priority Mail. But it does not allow all things which might fall into these categories or like categories. The rules are riddled with contradictions and outdated approaches. We will look at two such applications, comic books and video games.

An eBay PSA

eBay can suck to use. I have bought a bunch of comic books recently from many sellers. On August 13 I bought many books and all but one shipped within days. Then on August 26-31 I bought a fair number more and again all shipped within days.

About two weeks and receiving no shipping notifications about the one August 13 book, I initiated a request to cancel the order through the eBay system. The seller refused. An automated response said it was "too late" to cancel the order. Too late? the book has not even had a shipping label printed for it! I then sent a message to him in eBay Messages on August 28 asking when my book would be shipped, no response.

On his listing it says "ships within 5-30 business days." I did not look hard enough at the listing at the time I was buying. eBay lets sellers put a vacation notification on their listings but this seller did not have one. Even so, 30 business days to ship a single issue comic book is a ridiculous amount of time in this day and age but eBay permits it. Then on September 6 I sent him another message stating that the 30th business day would be September 24, I would hold him to his words and file a complaint with eBay on the 25th if he had not shipped it by then. He shipped it on September 9, via USPS media mail, 27 days after my order. (Shipped is when you put a package into the hands of the carrier, not when you print a shipping label).

After receiving the book on the 11th, today I left neutral feedback for this seller, (after debating whether to leave negative), writing that the book was well packaged and in good condition but the seller was uncommunicative and was absurdly slow in shipping. The seller does not live in a rural area and there is a post office within walking distance of his return address. I might observe that a single $9.00 purchase (including shipping) may not be terribly motivating to get a seller who runs a comic book selling business to the post office promptly. Within minutes of posting the feedback the seller contacted me for the first time on eBay messages to say he would be getting it removed. After a few minutes it was and he said as much and added me to the blocked list. I responded that I would never buy from him again anyway and it is sellers like him that makes eBay suck to use sometimes.

26 other eBay sellers managed to ship and deliver comic books to me before him since August 13. Most of them had them in the mail within 1-3 days after placing the order. Some of the other orders were for heavy trade paperbacks or from longer distances, this was for a single issue one state over. The longest to ship other than this seller was 7 days and I certainly did not ask to cancel that order.

How was the seller able to remove my neutral feedback so quickly? eBay has a feedback policy where it removes "neutral/negative feedback when we can see that: The buyer asked to cancel after placing their order". I think this is a bad policy to apply automatically when the seller refuses to cancel the order. I could not remember the last time I left negative feedback for a seller, I apparently have left only one since 1998. This seller still has 30 other neutral and 5 negative feedbacks that he cannot remove and will likely accumulate more if this is how he runs his business. He of course must know the eBay policies very well. Has he been able to stifle criticism of other buyers who have made the same mistake?

The moral of this story is to be patient and do not try to cancel items if you want to be able to leave honest feedback. Ask the seller through messages first if he is willing to cancel but it is better to steer clear of any seller which puts something like "ships within 5-30 business days" in their description. Fortunately I have had my fill of buying comic books for a while. Still, eBay has laid a trap for the unwary buyer by providing them with an automated system for buyers to request cancellation but not warning them that they give up their right to leave permanent neutral/negative feedback if the seller refuses to cancel. I do not recall seeing any such warning with the system. There are many bad reasons why buyers cancel but also some good ones. I believe my request was reasonable after waiting for two weeks for a seller to put the book in the mail or at least contact me to tell me why it would be delayed. The automatic ability to remove the feedback is my quarrel with the policy. A company which actually cares about customer service should at least have a human being consider the situation before removing the feedback.

The Last Gasp of the Intellivision Amico

Back in 2019, I wrote a blog article about the Intellivision Amico and predicted that there were significant hurdles which it would have to overcome if it was going to succeed in the marketplace.  Nearly three years later, the company behind the Amico, Intellivision Entertainment's, prospects of releasing anything other than a Chapter 7 or 11 Bankruptcy petition are looking exceedingly remote.  Millions of dollars in public and private investment were poured into Intellivision Entertainment and thousands of preorders with $100 deposits were placed for the console and thousands of RFID tag game boxes were sold.  All that money is probably gone now with almost nothing to show for it.  Formerly once rabid fans of the Amico have turned, one by one, against the company with bitterness previously reserved for the Amico's "haters".  Preorder backers are waiting increasingly long for the company to process cancellation requests.  Staff have been let go in order to cut costs, but Intellivision owes a lot of money to a lot of people, no consoles manufactured and increasingly fewer opportunities to find funding for its console.

But let's turn the clock back just a bit, back just to last year.  In 2021, the Amico was still a possibility, Tommy Tallarico was still the CEO, still willing to give lengthy interviews to anyone willing to listen and still able to contribute post after post to the AtariAge Forums.  Amico cheerleaders like Atari Creep, Retro Bro, SmashJT and Saggy Melonz were still touting the Amico and bashing the haters with tireless enthusiasm on YouTube.  Tommy was making the rounds with the console and the games that were sufficiently developed to show off to the general public.  I was present at one of those events, but while one could not have predicted with certainty, now it highly probable that it may have been the last.  In this blog article, I will relate my personal experiences at the last Amico demonstration of 2021 and then discuss why that potential is likely never to come to pass.  

Lag : Consoles, Emulators, FPGAs

When playing classic video games on non-original hardware, one should always be conscious for the amount of extra lag that method may offer over the original hardware.  Along with accuracy, latency is one of the most important tangible benefits (versus of using original hardware and display technology (CRTs) over emulators and current display technology (LCDs).  Latency has always existed in some form, and in this article I will give an overview on how latency has evolved over time.  

Additionally, the use of FPGA chips to simulate original hardware has become increasingly popular over the past five years.  FPGAs can offer the benefit of lower latency compared to traditional software based emulation and can offer a high degree of accuracy by using relatively inexpensive hardware.  FPGAs are not without their singular issues, and in this article I will go over some of the issues with using FPGAs as a replacement for original hardware.

The Intellivision Amico - Can a "Family Friendly" Console Succeed?

The Intellivision Amico in Metallic Pearl, courtesy of Intellivision Entertainment

Who remembers the Intellivision today?  Some readers with a sense of history will remember the console as the first console to seriously compete with Atari 2600 before the video game crash of 1983-84.  A few may even have had one when they were younger, have one in their collection or played one at some point in their lives.  To the general public, also-ran pre-crash consoles like the Intellivision barely register in its memory.  Intellivision is posed to make a comeback with the Amico console, a console built with the laudable goal of getting families to play video games together.  But it is a very different market that Intellivision is trying to make a splash compared to ten years ago, never mind forty.  Can the Amico become a success when it is scheduled to launch next year?  Let's explore its prospects in this article.

The Blog at 400 Posts

400 blog posts?   Have I really written so many?  Blogger says I have, so I'll have to accept that.  I suppose its time for one of those meta-blog entries where I talk about stuff that doesn't fit into a traditional blog post.  So let's start with a revisit of one of the only useful parts of the previous "Blog at xxx Posts" posts, the Youtube channel recommendations list.  I subscribe to many more channels these days than I used to, so let me tell you why you may want to take a look at them as well.  The channels I recommended (LGR, Pixelmusement and PushingUpRoses) in my early blog post remain recommended of course, but let's add some fresh blood to the list.  I will be using categories to help organize recommended channels, but just because a channel falls into one category does not mean it holds no value outside that pigeonhole. 

The CollectorVision Phoenix Part 2 - The FPGA System Built by Thieves and Sold on Disinformation

Three blog posts ago, I was rather critical of the CollectorVision Phoenix, an FPGA console which implements the ColecoVision : https://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-collectorvision-phoenix-fpga.html  I said all that I believed needed to be said, but since then I have determined that the console was deserving of further criticism.

Before we go into the specifics of my claims, let's review the basic hardware specifications of the ColecoVision and similar systems which are based off the TMS9928A Video Display Processor (VDP).

The Great Unknown : 720p and 480p Retro Solutions

While retro video games and consoles have been getting the digital treatment in the forms of emulators, PCs and services like the Virtual Console, buying hardware to specifically play retro games in a digital form (as opposed to a clone console) is a relatively recent phenomenon.  There has been a draw for people who want to really use their cartridges on a high quality, high definition system using a modern TV.  There has also been a market for people who want a plug-and-play box where they don't have to fiddle with emulator options.  Most modern TVs use the HDMI connector for passing digital content through to a LCD panel's display processor.  HDMI licensing issues aside (search my blog for information about those issues), most of these retro devices support a maximum resolution of 480p, 720p or 1080p.  While some of these devices support 1080p, many only support 720p or 480p. which can lead to thorny problems with lag and image resizing.  Let's take a look at the issues in this blog article.

First, here is a list of current or actually released retro-centered solutions by the maximum resolution they support :

Legal Remedies for Copyright Infringement of Open Source Software & the Trouble with Temporary Copies

Clone consoles are nothing new, clones have been made since the Atari 2600 became successful.  During a console's market life and for years thereafter, clones were usually illegal because they infringed on the maker's patents.  But patents expire, usually after twenty years, and after the consoles that utilized those patented chips and technologies could be freely recreated.  For successful vintage consoles, hardware clones usually follow their patent expiration.  Early clones used reverse engineered ASICs to replicate the functionality of an Atari 2600, a NES, a SNES and a Genesis.  But newer clones frequently use ARM processors and run emulators to cut down on costs and improve features.  One such clone, the Hyperkin RetroN 5, caused a great deal of controversy when it was discovered to have used emulators without permission from their original authors.  Let's dive into the legal ramifications of the this behavior.

Flawed, Risky and Dangerous Devices for your Retro Consoles and PCs

Most of us appreciate it when enterprising entrepeneurs go out of their way to make new products for us to enjoy on our vintage consoles.  However, they don't always get it right.  Some products can be positively dangerous to your consoles, others are not obviously dangerous but have the potential to decrease your console's lifespan.  In this blog entry I will discuss modern products that are fundamentally flawed, risky to use or just plain dangerous.

He's making list, checking it twice,
Gonna find out whose naughty and nice...

Your Meme for Today - Portable Console Gaming Over Time

2017 :

Courtesy of Nintendo

2002 :

Courtesy of neogaf forum

1987 :

Old Coleco or New Coleco : Nostalgia or Nothing

ColecoVision Video Game System (courtesy of wikipedia)

The Connecticut Leather Company, popularly known by its moniker Coleco, certainly had an interesting role in the history of video games.  It started by making dedicated game consoles in the Pong-era which were marketed as the Telstar series.  They also made a line of well-received hand-held conversions of arcade games, the mini-Arcades.  Finally, they turned their hands to marketing a game console, the ColecoVision, and a home computer, the Adam.  But when the video game crash wiped out all the consoles of the 2nd generation of video games, they were left to selling Cabbage Patch Kids dolls and other toys to survive for a time.  The costly failures of their video game ventures brought them to liquidation by the end of the 1980s.

In 2005, the Coleco brand was reintroduced to the general public by West River Holdings (WRH), a company that revitalizes older trademarks.  Companies like WRH look for trademarks which have been dormant for some time but had been previously been associated by the public with a successful product or service.  These trademarks could simply discontinued by the user of the mark or abandoned when the owner went out of business.  WRH typically forms an LLC to manage and promote each trademark it acquires.  In Coleco's case, it was Coleco Holdings, LLC.  In 2016, WRH and its brands were purchased by Dormitus Brands, another trademark holding company.

For the remainder of this article, where it is necessary to distinguish the two, I will refer to the original Coleco, the company that was sold in the late 1980s as the "old Coleco".  The WRH incarnation will be referred to as the "new Coleco".  Let's discuss the legacy of the old Coleco vs. the new Coleco.

First World Problems : Finding a Good Movie Theater Screen

Here is a problem : You live in an area where there are a almost a dozen movie theaters showing first run films within a 25-mile radius of your house but you are almost an hour away away from a major city.  You want to see a large budget, action and spectacle heavy film.  This means you want to see it on a big screen with a powerful sound system.  The same screen may not be necessary for an intimate drama or a raunchy comedy, but when it comes to action, bigger is usually better.

The biggest films, especially action/adventure films, tend to be shown on more than one screen, at least on opening weekend.  Today, many of the big films are converted to 3-D, even though most were not shot with 3-D in mind.  In the theaters around me, there will be separate screens devoted to the 2-D version and the 3-D version.  A couple of theaters near me have a giant screen.  Showcase Cinemas and AMC refers to their giant screen as IMAX (licensing the trademark) and Regal Cinemas calls their screen RPX.  These will always show the 3-D version of the film.  In the upcoming years, there may be a battle between the two chains and their competing 4D technologies, (Showcase uses MX4D, Regal uses 4DX) but that is the subject of another blog entry.

I saw Kong : Skull Island on the local-ish Showcase Cinema's IMAX screen.  Some commentators have derisively called these screens "LIEMAX" because they are smaller than a true IMAX screen.  While there are dedicated IMAX theaters in my state with the enormous screen, they are much further away than the local IMAX.

The local IMAX gives a very good presentation compared to non-IMAX sized-screens.  I saw Star Wars Rogue One in the 2-D version at the Regal Cinemas theater and was very disappointed with the size of the screen.  Not only was it small, it was noticeably offset from the center of the room.  I have a suspicion that these shoebox theaters may only be using 2K projectors, the industry standard is to use 4K projectors.  The movie deserved better.

The problem is these cinema chains only show the 3-D version of the films.  If you want to see a 2-D version of the film, you are often left with small screens and small theaters that just don't do the action on-screen justice in this day and age.  While the 3-D conversion of Kong was without major flaws, the glasses I had to wear were uncomfortable and tended to fog up around the bridge of the nose.   You simply cannot take off the glasses and expect to enjoy what is on the screen, it will appear blurry thanks to the dual projection of the 3-D images.

I find that 3-D does not particularly add much to a film that was not shot with 3-D in mind.  On the other hand, when the film was shot with 3-D in mind and projected on a huge screen, as was the case with Gravity, the experience is incredible.  Moreover, a 3-D conversion does not reflect the director's intent unless the director supervised the process. There are also 4D conversions of films that add moving seats and other tactile sensory perceptions, but that kind of gimmickry only reflects the studio's intent, not the director's.

While I am on the subject, Showcase Cinemas has a dizzying array of theater options.  Depending on the theater, you could have choices of a 2-D screen, a 3-D screen, a Lux Level option for each ( with food service), an IMAX 3-D screen, an MX4D screen (motion seats and sensory effects) or an XPLUS screen (featuring Dolby Atmos sound).  There are also a few SuperLux theaters that seem more focused on comfort and food than a pure or traditional moviegoing experience.  Offering a comprehensive experience with a restaurant, bar, comfy seating and in-movie service does seem to be the trend in upscale movie theaters.

A Better Alternative to the NES Classic Edition

In the final entry in what has turned to cover way too much blog space, I am giving my reasons why I cannot recommend the NES Classic Edition (CE).  The CE has a lot going for it, an attractive price, a cute look, the official throwback factor, 30 classic games, a good replica controller.  But it has a few downsides.

The first is obvious, the cables are way too short.  They are only 2.5' long.  An original NES controller is over 6' long.  If you want to play with the CE while sitting on the couch, you will need either a long HDMI cable or controller cable extenders.  A 25' HDMI cable will run you about $15 on Monoprice, but the controller extensions coming out for the CE run $10 each.  If you want to play a two player game, that is another $10.  Ultimately, the problem can be fixed, but the fixes will turn a $60 device into a $90 device.

The second is equally obvious, the console is not upgradeable.  When you finish playing those 30 games, what then?  It will be back to the Virtual Console.  Want to play Mega Man 3, Castlevania 3, Startropics 2, Ninja Gaiden 2, Contra or Tecmo Super Bowl?  You may have to wait for something like the CE 2.0 Edition.  Given that Nintendo included virtually all its first party classics in the existing CE, the game lineup in the CE 2.0 would prove interesting to say the least.

Nosferatu and the Public Domain

I.  Rights in Nosferatu

Abraham "Bram" Stoker died on April 20, 1912.  When he died, his estate consisted mainly of his literary work.  To support his wife Florence Stoker, the only work with any continuing market value was his most famous novel, Dracula.  Unfortunately, that revenue was not particularly impressive at the time.

In 1921, Albin Grau had co-founded a studio called Prana Films and decided to make a loose adaptation of Dracula.  This film was finished in late 1921 and released in 1922 and called Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens.  It has become a classic film of the German Silent Expressionist movement.  It has widely been considered to be in the public domain, but as I will show here, that may not necessarily be the case.

The NES Garage Cart - The Father of NES Homebrew Cartridges

In June of 2005, Memblers (Joey Parsell), the webmaster of NesDev.com, offered for sale a cartridge he called the NES Garage Cart.  The NES Garage Cart is significant because it is the first known homebrew NES cartridge ever published.  Approximately 24 were hand-made and individually numbered.  The last Nintendo Entertainment System cartridge that had been officially released was the unlicensed game Sunday Funday in 1995.  In 1998 there was a cache of 1,500 Cheetamen II cartridges found and sold, but no new cartridges thereafter was made available for sale in any kind of quantity, however modest, until Memblers came along.

The NES Garage Cart is a multi-cart containing three games.  The first two, Munchie Attack and Hot Seat Harry, are games from Memblers himself.  The third game is Solar Wars from Chris Covell.  Solar Wars probably has the distinction of being the first homebrew game ever released for the NES.  None of these games were officially released in standalone cartridge form.  The games individually are free to distribute and can be found here : http://www.nesworld.com/index.php in the "Homebrew" section.  They all play well in a NES PowerPak or EverDrive N8.

There are NTSC and PAL versions of the Garage Cart, more of the former exist.  He printed up some rough labels and hand numbered the carts and sold them to NesDev forum members like me who were willing to pay.  No box and no manual were included, it would be years before you could expect such amenities with homebrew cartridges.

Hot Seat Harry is a simple button mashing game that only takes up 1KB of ROM space.  You have to get the dot in the center to touch the CPU player before he gets the got to your player.

Munchie Attack is a simple eat food, avoid non-food game that only uses the D-Pad and takes up 4KB of ROM space.

Both games were made for mini-game competitions held in 2002 and 2003, respectively.  They would easily fit inside the smallest 16KB/8KB NES NROM board, but will require replacing CHR-ROM with CHR-RAM.  Munchie Attack uses horizontal mirroring, Hot Seat Harry uses vertical mirroring.

Solar Wars is a tank aiming game in the vein of Scorched Earth where you set the velocity and angle of your tank's shots.  You have to deal with terrain, gravity (each planet has different gravity) and the position of the other tank, which can be moved on a player's turn.  Solar Wars was originally developed in 1999, but was burnt to EPROMs and tested with a real NES.  Many NES  projects in the early days used inaccurate emulators like Nesticle and would fail on real hardware and later emulators which were more accurate.  Solar Wars is much larger than Munchie Attack and Hot Seat Harry combined.  It uses a 32KB PRG-ROM and a 32KB CHR-ROM and requires a CNROM bankswitching board set to vertical mirroring.

All these games were made long before custom development boards were available.  Homebrew games were tested and made in the early days by cannibalizing cheaper NES boards and cartridge shells.  While they still are to some extent, there are now development boards available in sufficient quantities and from a few vendors (Memblers being one of them).  While they may not rival Nintendo's MMC5 or Konami's VRC VII, they can do a lot more than just simple PRG/CHR bankswitching these days.  They even use replacement CIC lockout chips.

NES Garage Cart Rear - Look Familiar?

While Chris Covell put up instructions on his site for Solar Wars to make your own cartridge copy, he never sold it in cartridge format himself.  Memblers decided to release a series of homebrew cartridges with the label of "Garage Cart".  He has not yet released a successor to the original Garage Cart, but he is still working on it.  For the Garage Cart, he used the most common NES game in existence for his board, Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt.  This game often comes with the Mask ROMs contained within bonded epoxy blobs, but some cartridges use a board with DIP-style packaged Mask ROMs.  The board with real chips is the NES-MHROM board, which supports PRG and CHR bankswitching.  Mirroring is hardwired to vertical mirroring on this PCB, which was only used for SMB/DH.

Garage Cart PCB Front

SMB/DK uses 64KB of PRG-ROM and 16KB of CHR-ROM.  The board itself can accept up to a 32KB CHR-ROM without modification.  The Garage Cart uses a 64KB One Time Programmable EPROM (no quartz UV erasure window) for the PRG-ROM.  However, what makes the cartridge unique, functionally, is that it does not use CHR-ROM, in its place it has 32KB of CHR-RAM (a.k.a. V-RAM).  Only a few cartridges use bankswitched CHR-RAM, such as Videomation.

In order to implement the RAM, a wire has to connect the RAM chip's write enable pin to the CHR-RAM enable pin on the cartridge connector.  It is a very simple modification and no other rewiring is required because the pinouts for the ROM chips Nintendo used and the S-RAM and EPROM chips Memblers used are identical save for the one exception noted above  The game could be dumped with a CopyNES using Mapper 66 parameters and does run in an emulator properly supporting the iNES 2.0 standard.  The ROM is not publicly available but it can be emulated if your emulator or your flash cart supports the proper iNES 2.0 parameters.

Garage Cart PCB Back

When I received my cart, I only had my Famicom A/V and a 72-to-60 pin converter.  It worked just fine except that the title screen in Solar Wars would show some jumpiness.  I sent it back to Memblers who opined that it could have been due to Solar Wars using color palette entry $0D, the "blacker than black" entry.  $0D is so close to a TV's blanking signal that some TVs may show visual anomalies or glitches if it is used.  I have a CRT that will show anomalies when that color finds its way into games.  Memblers patched my copy to use the regular $0F instead of $0D for black, but the problem still persisted when I received the cartridge back.  I solved the problem by using a Game Genie and then later a front-loading NES (it does occur seldomly on the latter).  According to Memblers, no one else complained of the issue, so I would have been the only person to receive a hardware revision of the NTSC version.

When you turn the power on your NES with the cartridge inserted, you are treated to a menu selection screen and given a choice for each game.  Specially-composed music plays in the background and there is animation and a pattern being drawn on the screen until you select the game.  The menu has three pieces of music, the game starts with the piece that will play if you reset the console after selecting Solar Wars.  The other two games will allow you to hear another piece of music if you reset after playing each one.

I bought Garage Cart #5 for approximately $42.00 plus shipping in 2004.  However, other than the menu, there was nothing unique about the software.  The games were all freely available and playable.  I noticed that the Garage Cart had steadily climbed in value over the years.  When the value had increased from $100-200 to $700-800, I knew the day would come when I would have to part with mine.

I decided on using NintendoAge instead of eBay to auction off my cartridge.  I did not want to pay eBay's final value fee on top of the PayPal transaction fee.  Moreover, I believed that any collector who would be interested in the Garage Cart would be on the NintendoAge forum.   I let the auction go for seven days.  I would not use any of that cheap nonsense about extending the auction by 2 minutes past the end time each time another bid came in.  QuiBids this is not!  The final bid came in at $1,870.00 on at 9:22PM on January 29, 2016, eight minutes before the auction end.  The winner paid the next day and made no complaint about the shipping or insurance cost.  I made sure to offer the buyer the opportunity to purchase insurance, the risk of loss would squarely be on the buyer if he did not.  I even offered to deliver the cartridge to the buyer personally, since we both lived in the same state, but he demurred.

As part of my auction I made high resolution, 600dpi scans of the cartridge label, as shown above.  I also made a video showing the cartridge's condition and it working in my front loader NES.  When you have to point a camera at a CRT TV screen, I suggest decreasing the brightness and contrast quite a bit.  I also found that I obtained a better picture by eliminating all ambient light sources in the room, hence I shot it at night.  I shot it using the camera's "60fps" capabilities, but the resulting frame rate of the video is 59.49227fps while the NES's frame rate is 60.098815fps.  So there will be some retrace bar shown as a black line going up the screen, which can be seen when I am playing Solar Wars.  However, it won't be nearly as bad as those thick, slow moving bars you get at the standard "30fps".  Here is a video showing the Garage Cart's menu :



Having parted with this unique piece of history, I am glad that a collector will be able to enjoy it.  Even though the game would be easy enough to recreate, there will never be a replacement for those 24 cartridges sold during the summer of 2005.  Today NES Homebrew is quite the business with many new cartridge games being released each year, but here is where it started and I had the privilege of being there for its birth.

Copyright Conumdrums - How Long will the original Godzilla be Protected by Copyright?

The film Godzilla (Gojira) was first released to theaters in Japan on November 3, 1954.  An authorized Americanized version with dubbed dialogue, reediting and the addition of Western actors, entitled Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, premiered in United States theaters on April 26, 1956.  In this article, I will illustrate how to determine the copyright protection term for a foreign film and some of the difficulties that can arise with determining the length of the copyright term.

Copyright Protection for Godzilla, King of the Monsters!

You may recall from my Manos article that works published or registered after 1964 have an effective copyright date of 95 years from the date of publication or registration.  This is primarily due to the automatic renewal provision of the copyright law. Works published from 1923-1963 require manual renewal registration to enjoy the same period of protection.  In other words, the author or copyright holder must renew the copyright with the Copyright Office within 28 years of their first registration in order to receive the benefit of the renewal term of 67 years.

Godzilla, King of the Monsters registered its copyright protection on April 27, 1956 according to the Catalog of Copyright Entries, Volume 10, 1956 at page 13.  It was copyrighted by Jewell Enterprises, Inc. and is given the number LP6465 (LP = Published motion picture photoplays). The current Public Catalog from the Copyright Office gives a renewal notice for Godzilla, King of the Monsters, RE0000254883, dated December 31, 1984. While this is not within 28 calendar years of the original registration,  the original protection term extends to the end of the 28th year from the initial year in which the protection first accrued.  The renewal for Godzilla, King of the Monsters had to have occurred some time in 1984, which it did.  Therefore, the copyright in Godzilla, King of the Monsters will expire in 2051 absent any further change to the copyright term by Congress. 

When you search for copyright registrations, post 1978 works are freely searchable through the Copyright Office's online search function.  However, for works before 1978, you will have to search through the volumes of the Catalog of Copyright Entries.  Each year usually has 12-14 volumes covering all kinds of works.  Each volume can be accessed through the Internet Archive or downloaded as a PDF.  The listings for motion picture works may be split into two volumes, one covering the first half of the year and the second covering the second half of the year. 

Copyright Protection for Godzilla in the United States

The copyright status of Godzilla, King of the Monsters! is the easy part.  The protection afforded to the original Godzilla is not so easy to trace.  First, Godzilla cannot owe its protection to Godzilla, King of the Monsters because the Japanese film is not a derivative work of the American film.  The reverse is true.  Second, the subtitled versions of Godzilla released in 2004 (Rialto) and 2012 (Criterion) are derivative works of the Japanese-language original film and have their own lengthy terms (95 years) of copyright protection attached to them (for the translations only). 

Interestingly, Godzilla is described as renewed in Registration Number RE0000145774 as of December 14, 1982.  The original registration number given is PA0000157725 with a date of November 3, 1954, which is the film's original release date in Japan.  However, if you look at PA0000157725, it also has a date of December 14, 1982 and notes that an English subtitled version was deposited in lieu of the original by special permission.  As I mentioned above, a subtitled version of Godzilla was hitting the art house circuit during this time.  You will see a similar entry for Seven Samurai, originally released in 1954 and renewed in 1982. Godzilla Raids Again has a similar history, with renewal in 1983 (RE0000179539, RE0000188890) relating back to an original publication date of 1955 (PA0000172648).  The Gigantis the Fire Monster version also has a true 1960 registration, LP16500, and a 1987 renewal, RE0000350420.

The PA prefix stands for performing arts and is a collection of many different types of works which previously had their own prefix like LP and DU.  The PA prefix did not exist in 1954 or any year near it. Godzilla was not registered in the Copyright office, nor were other Japanese films from Toho studios during this time.  Typically Japanese films were registered when they were in the hands of a U.S. distributor and were either dubbed or subtitled.

So, how did Toho and other foreign film companies protect its films from being pirated abroad from the 1950s onward?  They relied upon international treaties similar to the Berne Convention.  The U.S. did not become a signatory to Berne until 1988, prior to that other treaties encompassed copyright protection between the two companies.  The US and Japan have had copyright relations since 1909 and there is an unbroken copyright protection continuity (with exceptions not material here) between the two countries despite World War II.  Essentially, a work that followed certain basic copyright formalities in its own country received reciprocal protection from the United States.  The most important requirement was a copyright notice on the work when it was first published.  Registration could occur during any time during the initial period of protection.  The film was renewed in 1982 and that seems to have secured its long-term protection in the U.S.  As a work for hire, it will enter the public domain in 2049.

Copyright Protection for Godzilla in Japan

How long is the copyright term for Godzilla in Japan?  The answer is not quite as simple as you might expect.  Japan currently has three periods of protection.  First is life of the author(s) plus 70 years, second is 70 years of publication of works from a corporation or legal person and third is 70 years from date of publication of cinematographic works created or published on or after 1970.  

You may say that Godzilla was published by Toho Co. Ltd., a corporation, so Godzilla will be in the public domain in its native Japan as of 2025.  But not so fast there, thanks to the Kurosawa Rule the term is 38 years from the "author's" death.  The Kurosawa Rule comes from a 2007 Tokyo District Court case, upheld by the Intellectual Property High Court.  The lawsuit was initiated by Toho and Kadokawa Pictures Inc. (successor to Daiei Film Co. Ltd.) against a public-domain DVD seller who was selling the films of Akira Kurosawa released between 1943-1951.  The case is described here and here.

The court declined to apply the current copyright scheme retroactively, which would have put the Kurosawa films at issue (and a few more by the time the case was decided) in the public domain.  Instead, it held that, as to movies published before 1971 when the current copyright scheme was more-or-less put into place, the copyright term which applied was the law at that time, life of the author plus 38 years.  In this case, the Court determined that Akira Kurosawa was the primary creator of these films and therefore the author of these films for purposes of the copyright law.  That he made these films as work for hire, passing his copyright to the film companies who engaged him, was not relevant. Akira Kurosawa died in 1998, so his pre-1971 films would not enter the public domain in Japan until 2036.  Fortunately the Court did not hold that the author was Toho or Daiei, otherwise the works may never enter the public domain because a corporate author can live a very long time.  I would note that an earlier Tokyo District Court ruling held that Paramount's pre 1953-films to be in the public domain in Japan, but the authorship issue did not appear to be raised in that case.

So, for Godzilla and every other Godzilla film until Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971), who is the author? Godzilla films were usually more collaborative works than Kurosawa's films.  The collaborative team for the Godzilla series included several people, principally Director and Ishiro Honda, Producer Tomoyuki Tanaka (who came up with the original idea for Godzilla), Special Effects Director Eiji Tsuburaya and Music Composer Akira Ifukube. Most of these men would comprise the team for the later entries in the Godzilla franchise until 1975.  If the Kurosawa Rule is strictly confined to the director, then it would be Honda's death in 1993 that would start the clock on the 38 years for Godzilla and five of its first eight sequels.  If on the other hand, Japanese law on co-authorship is more like that of the United Kingdom's when it comes to film (last to die of Principal Director, Screenwriter, Dialogue Writer or Film Composer), then it would be measured from Ifukube's death in 2006.  Assuming that the statement “the copyright over films is protected for 38 years from the year after the death of the director” as translated on the akirakurosawa.info site applies to all pre-1970 films, then 2031 will see a lot of Godzilla enter the public domain in its native country.  

If we assume that the "Kurosawa Rule" is limited to the director, then this can lead to some very staggered public domain release dates.  By that rule, Godzilla Raids Again would have entered Japanese public domain in 2011, 38 years after its Director, Motoyoshi Oda's, death.  Moreover, the films Ebirah, Horror of the Deep and Son of Godzilla would enter the public domain in 2038 because Director Jun Fukuda died in 2000.  By the operation of this rule, those two films will enter into the public domain after the next two films in the series, Destroy All Monsters and All Monsters Attack, due to their direction by Ishiro Honda.

No More Public Domain Copies of Godzilla Films

In the U.S., there used to be many, many copies of films believed to be in the public domain released by bargain basement companies on VHS and, to a lesser extent, on DVD.  Godzilla vs. Megalon is one of those films, four US VHS covers from four different companies of the film can be found here.  The public domain outfits would find films without a copyright notice on them and run with them to the end of a tape spool.  When Cinema Shares released Godzilla vs. Megalon to theaters back in 1976, they apparently omitted this requirement.  This meant that the English Dubbed version is in the Public Domain in the United States.

However, the situation does not end there because the English Dubbed version is a derivative work of the Japanese language original.  The Japanese language original from 1973 had a copyright notice on its film prints, so it is protected by both the US and Japanese law.  Copyright protection in a protected original work extends to a derivative work.  The "translation" of Godzilla vs. Megalon from Japanese to English is certainly a derivative work.  Moreover, even if a derivative work falls into the public domain, it does not affect the validity of the copyright of the original work. Batjac Prods. v. Goodtimes Home Video Corp., 160 F.3d 1223 (9th Cir. 1998) held that the portions of an unpublished and uncopyrighted work prior to 1978 fell into the public domain if incorporated into an authorized derivative work if that derivative work fell into the public domain, but that case does not apply when the original Japanese release was protected by a valid copyright.  By contrast, parodies and other fair uses are not subject to the original copyright holder's control.  Toho did not really attempt to enforce its rights until the DVD era for reasons unknown but likely because it would have simply have been too expensive to sue for too little gain. 

Sometime in the DVD era, Toho decided to drop the hammer on the public domain companies.  In one famous instance,  Rhino Entertainment originally released the MST3K Godzilla vs. Megalon episode in the Volume 10 boxset, but quickly recalled it and replaced the film with The Giant Gila Monster.  You will not likely be seeing MST3K versions of Godzilla vs. Megalon or Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster released in the future by Shout Factory (which has rights to MST3K).  Of course video recordings of these episodes are not hard to find.  Interestingly, the Showa Gamera films (1966-1971) are still being hawked by Alpha Video, a public domain company, but it no longer advertises Godzilla vs. Megalon for sale.

Other Godzilla films also saw some dubious VHS tapes but nowhere near to the extent of Godzilla vs. Megalon. It seems like "public domain" VHS publishing companies like GoodTimes and Video Treasures licensed Godzilla films when they thought it was necessary. GoodTimes appeared to have licensed Godzilla, King of the Monsters! and King Kong vs. Godzilla and Video Treasures did the same for Godzilla Raids Again. Films like Godzilla vs. The Thing, Monster Zero, Destroy All Monsters, Godzilla's Revenge and Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster had their copyright notices on their title cards, so their copyright claim was hard to miss. I am only aware of one attempt to bootleg some of these films and those bootlegs (from Simitar, which later licensed them properly) did not last long on the market.

Other films like Godzilla vs. The Cosmic Monster and probably Godzilla on Monster Island (both released by Cinema Shares) only had their copyright notices at the end of the film, so a shady distributor could cut those frames out of their transfer or film print and claim plausible deniability of the copyright notice. The films released by Continental/Walter-Reade, Ghidrah, The Three-Headed Monster, Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster and Son of Godzilla may not originally have had copyright notices on their first releases (and if they did they were easy to ignore) but they were added when Alan Enterprises took over distribution of these films in the 1970s. Those notices deterred some, but not all bootleggers. 

The Copyright Notice on Japanese Films

In the United States, a copyright notice had to be applied to a work when first published, otherwise it forever lost copyright protection.  Forgetfulness often lead to the defeat of the important proprietary rights secured by Copyright.  However, not all countries required a copyright notice or other formal requirements like registration or deposit of the work.  These countries followed the Berne Convention, which essentially allowed copyright to attach to a work automatically when it was published.  In order to establish some universally applicable scheme of copyright reciprocity between countries, the United States and other nations entered into the Universal Copyright Convention of 1952, the UCC Geneva.  

The UCC Geneva allows a work published in a country who is a party to the Convention the copyright protection afforded to domestic works in other countries.  All that is required to meet the formalities requirement of the Convention is to affix a copyright notice to the work when first published.  There is no need to deposit the work in a central depository or engage in other formalities.  The Convention was in force in the United States as of September 16, 1955 and in Japan as of April 28, 1956. 

In the U.S., on releases of the Japanese-language versions of films Seven Samurai (Criterion Blu-ray), Godzilla (Classic Media DVD) and Godzilla Raids Again (Classic Media DVD), there is no contemporary copyright notice on them.  However, the Japanese-language versions of films like Rodan, The Mysterians, King Kong vs. Godzilla and later films all have a copyright notice and © at the end of the film.  The notice gives the title of the film, identifies Toho Co. Ltd. as the copyright holder and gives the year in which the movie was published.  The first set of films were first published in 1954 and 1955 while the films from Rodan forward were published in 1956 and later.  Even though Japanese domestic law did not require a copyright notice, by placing the notice on their films Toho assured that they would be protected in other companies.  Given the increasing market for Japanese fantasy and prestige films, this was a no-brainer and cost-free decision to protect the value of these films.  

Prior to UCC Geneva, copyright respect between the U.S. and Japan was established by the Convention of 1905, followed by the Treaty of Peace of 1951 and the Exchange of Notes of 1953.  A reading of the respective clauses relating to U.S. protection for Japanese works requires that a copyright notice and deposit would be required : 

1905, Article I - "The subjects or citizens of each of the two High Contracting Parties shall enjoy in the dominions of the other, the protection of copyright for their works of literature and art as well as photographs, against illegal reproduction, on the same basis on which protection is granted to the subject or citizens of the other..."  34 Stat. 2890

1951, Article 14(2)(V) - "The Allied Powers agree to deal with Japanese trademarks and literary and artistic property rights on a basis as favorable to Japan as circumstances ruling in each country will permit."  3 UST 3169

1953, - "That since April 28, 1952, the conditions specified in sections 9 (b) and 1 (e) of title 17 of the United States Code have existed and have been fulfilled with respect to the nationals of Japan,  and that nationals of Japan have since that date been entitled and will continue to be entitled for a period of 4 years from the first coming into force of the Treaty of Peace [April 28, 1952], to all the benefits of the said title 17 except those conferred by the provisions embodied in the second paragraph of section 9 (b) thereof regarding the extension of time for fulfilling copyright conditions and formalities.

Provided, that the enjoyment by any work of the rights and benefits conferred by the said title 17 shall be conditioned upon compliance with the requirements and formalities prescribed with respect to such works by the copyright laws of the United States;"  5 UST 118, TIAS 2906.

Before you come to the obvious conclusion, namely that Seven Samurai and the first two Godzilla films never enjoyed copyright protection because they did not comply with U.S. formalities, one must deal with the issue of publication.  Section 9 of the 1909 Copyright Act indicates :

"That any person entitled thereto by this Act may secure copyright for his work by publication thereof with the notice of copyright required by this Act; and such notice shall be affixed to each copy thereof published or offered for sale in the United States by authority of the copyright proprietor, except in the case of books seeking ad interim protection under section twenty-one of this Act. "

Judicial decisions construing the statutory text of Section 9 indicated that this language was ambiguous as to whether publication in a foreign country without a notice placed a work in the public domain in the United States.  For an excellent discussion of the authorities on this subject, see Chapter 9, "Copyright Protection for Works of Foreign Origin" in "The Internationalization of Law and Legal Education" (2008).  The decision in Heim v. Universal Pictures Co., 154 F. 2d 480 (2nd Cir. 1946) held that notice was not required when the publication first occurred in a foreign country, and after that decision, the Copyright Office began accepting submissions where that was the case.  But Heim was only binding on the cases arising out of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (New York, Connecticut and Vermont).  Nonetheless its persuasive authority seems to have permitted protection for films without a copyright notice when published in their country of origin. Heim did not protect the U.S. distributor if it screwed up and did not put a copyright notice on its version of the film. In addition, until the authorized publication of the work in the United States, these films may have enjoyed the common law protection afforded to unpublished works. 

After UCC Geneva, copyright notice on first publication anywhere in the world was effectively required until the U.S. adopted Berne.  Therefore, while Toho may have been safe in relying on the ambiguities of the pre-UCC Geneva law for its earlier titles, in 1956 it adopted to the new requirement by placing a Copyright Notice on all its films.  

The Restored Copyright

The third film in the Godzilla series, King Kong vs. Godzilla, was released on August 11, 1962 in Japan and in a re-edited form, with Western actors and Western music, on June 26, 1963 in the United States.  This film is unique in the Godzilla series because the U.S. rights to the film never reverted back to Toho.  RKO held the rights to the King Kong character at the time and Universal released the film to theaters and later to DVD and Blu-ray.  Toho continued to release the Japanese language film in Japan and other Asian markets in theatrical re-releases and on home video.

Universal registered its copyright in King Kong vs. Godzilla in 1963 and renewed it in 1991, so its version is fully protected. Unlike Godzilla and its sequel and other films like Seven Samurai, Toho was not able to distribute its original Japanese-language version in the U.S.  Although the Japanese version did have a proper copyright notice, Toho let 1990 go by without renewing the copyright to its King Kong vs. Godzilla.  Technically, its version entered the public domain in the U.S. in 1991. (It may have had state common-law protection as an unpublished work as it was made prior to 1978 when the 1976 Copyright Act eliminated common-law protection for unpublished works.)

It would not stay in the public domain, however.  In 1994, the United States enacted the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA), which came into force in 1996.  One of the provisions of this act allowed films which had fallen into the public domain because the formalities had not been followed (like copyright notice or renewal) if the film was not in the public domain in the country of origin.  This automatically restored Toho's copyright in King Kong vs. Godzilla, in addition to hundreds of other foreign films, as of January 1, 1996.  Toho registered the restored the copyright in its version of King Kong vs. Godzilla in 2002, PA0001151212.  This would protect its version of the film from bootleggers and pirates for the next 55 years. The URAA also made the discussion regarding Seven Samurai and the first two Godzilla films in the previous section academic except as to enforcement.

The URAA, including its arguably retroactive application in restoring works of foreign authors previously deemed to be within the U.S. public domain, was upheld in the Supreme Court's decision in Golan v. Holder, 565 U.S. __ (2012).  The court noted important restrictions on the URAA's restoration powers.  First, any work whose U.S. copyright term, as renewed, which had fully expired would not be restored. Works from 1922 and earlier that would still have some copyright protection in their country of origin were still in the U.S. public domain.  Second, no recovery for infringement could be had for conduct occurring before the effective date of the URAA or for the first year following its enactment.  Third, the copyright holder had to file a notice of intent to enforce with the Copyright Office before they could bring enforcement lawsuits against parties who had previously relied upon the public domain status of the work.  However, the Court recognized that it was within Congress' authority to define the scope of the public domain and that there was precedent dating back to the first Copyright Act of 1790 that established protection for works previously freely usable by the public.  It noted that Congress' efforts in the URAA were to bring the United States; copyright requirements into line with the international community, which generally eschewed formalities when establishing copyright protection as outlined in the Berne Convention.

The concept of the restored copyright seems to be one that has escaped even some lawsuits to which it may apply.  A case in point was the recent October 2015 lawsuit against Netflix for streaming a subtitled version of Vittorio De Sica's 1948 classic film Bicycle Thieves (a.k.a. The Bicycle Thief).  The copyright holder for the film, Corinth Films, acknowledged that the original Italian version of the film was in the public domain in its complaint filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York 

Corinth had previously been involved in litigation on the issue of the copyright status of Bicycle Thieves and in that 1985 case, Int’l Film Exch., Ltd. v. Corinth Films, Inc., 621 F. Supp. 631 (S.D.N.Y. 1985) also out of the same court, the Court held that the film was in the public domain because the owners had failed to renew the copyright to the film.  It also recognized that renewal certificates from the Copyright Office, one of which existed from 1976, were not the end of the issue.  The renewal certificate for The Bicycle Thief was invalid because it was not issued on behalf of the author or an assignee but a licensee.  Thus there was no valid copyright renewal.  The Court did note, however, that dubbed or subtitled versions of the film may still be able to claim copyright protection as derivative works.

As Corinth was involved in the earlier case, Netflix could argue that collateral estoppel prohibited Corinth from re-litigating the film's public domain status in a later case.  But this is 2015, not 1985, so Corinth should have argued (based on the facts known to me) that the original Italian language version is no longer within the public domain thanks to URAA.  Italy, the film's country of origin, gives a copyright term of life of the author plus 70 years and De Sica died in 1974.  His film is protected by Italian copyright law until 2044, making it eligible for URAA restoration.  Control over the original work would give it total control over the film even if Netflix or its licensor decided to pay someone a few thousand to translate the film and provide new subtitles.  However Corinth did not and the parties settled the case this month.  Corinth a missed an opportunity to assert its restored rights under URAA.

Manos : The Hands of Fate May Not be in the Public Domain

In my previous blog entry, I talked about the various versions of Manos: The Hands of Fate.  While performing research for that article, I came across information to suggest that the film may not be in the public domain as everyone seemed to have assumed was the case since Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MTS3K) first parodied it in 1993.  When Harold (Hal) P. Warren, who conceived Manos and functioned as its writer, producer, director and male lead failed to ensure that a copyright notice was put on the film, one would think that would have definitively indicated that the film entered the public domain due to his failure to follow the copyright requirements of the time.  However, the situation is far more complex than it first appears.

The Copyright Claim by the Warren Trust

Joe Warren, son of the deceased Hal Warren, has claimed that Manos is not in the public domain because his father registered his copyright in the screenplay with the Library of Congress.  In the Catalog of Copyright Entries: Third Series Volume 20, Parts 3-4, Number 1, Dramas and Works Prepared for Oral Delivery there is the following entry on page 17 :

FINGERS OF FATE, by Harold P. Warren.
66 1.  A screenplay.  © Harold P.
Warren; 18May66; DU65701

DU65701 is the Registration Number, with the D standing for "dramatic or dramatico-musical works" and the U standing for Unpublished work.  Registering unpublished works was far from uncommon, there were 1,452 registrations of unpublished dramatic works in that volume alone.   A screenwriter would be well-advised to register his unpublished screenplay prior to the days of automatic copyright protection when peddling it around Hollywood.  Although Harold P. (Paul) Warren died on December 26, 1985, however, because the work was registered in 1966, the life of the author plus seventy years term does not apply.  Only works created in 1978 or later enjoy that term of protection.

In 1966 when the copyright was registered in the screenplay, Harold P. Warren was entitled to enjoy a protection period of 28 years from the date of publication.  In 1978, the copyright law was amended to provide for a renewal term of 47 years.  In 1992, the term was automatically granted for works copyrighted between 1964-1977 (inclusive). Therefore, Warren's copyright in the Fingers of Fate screenplay was automatically renewed, even though he was dead.  The Supreme Court's decision in Stewart v. Abend, 495 U.S. 207, 110 S. Ct. 1750 (1990), held that renewal rights are vested in the heirs of the copyright holder despite any previous assignment made during the copyright holder's lifetime.  In 1998, the current copyright extension act added another 20 years for works registered between 1964-1977, bringing the term to 95 years.  Therefore, the screenplay will be protected until the year 2061.

As the screenplay is listed in the Catalog of Copyright Entries, that is prima facie evidence that the copyright was validly registered.  Prima facie evidence is evidence deemed legally sufficient for a jury to find for a party on that issue.  Once a plaintiff has shown the registration as given in the Volume cited above, the burden shifts to the defendant to show that the registration was invalid.

"Finggrs [sic] of Fate" was the title Ben Solovey found on the workprint leader when he obtained the 16mm workprint of the film.  Solovey then restored the film using the workprint and released his Restored Workprint version through Synapse Films, as indicated in the previous blog entry.  Joe Warren has claimed that the film is a derivative work of the screenplay.

While the screenplay was registered with the copyright office, thereby satisfying the formalities for a written work, the film was neither registered nor published with a copyright notice.  Joe Warren, Hal Warren's heir and Trustee of the Harold P. Warren Irrevocable Trust (the Trust) has argued that the film is a derivative work of the screenplay and thus the Trust may prohibit the the unauthorized distribution of the film.

The Argument against the Copyright Claim

Of course, it is interesting to note that Hal Warren authored the derivative work in question and failed to follow the formalities to protect it.   Having authorized the derivative work and allowed it to lapse into the public domain, can the author of the original work or his heirs exercise control over it?

One factor that cannot be overlooked is the time lapse between the time from when the derivative work entered the public domain, 1966, and when the Trust began some measure of enforcement activities in 2012. For 46 years it and its predecessors sat on its rights.  Of course between the time it was shown in West Texas drive-ins and the MST3K episode in 1993, it was not shown or made available for viewing, so there was no need to assert or defend rights.  When MST3K picked the film up from a pile of public domain movies on tape, as far as I know it did not seek permission from anybody to essentially create a derivative work.

The MST3K version of Manos is clearly a derivative work of the Manos film and possibly the Fingers of Fate screenplay.  It edits the film, taking the essential portion of it and mocks it both as it is being screened before Joel and the bots and during the host segments.  No one from the Warren family or the Trust (most likely not in existence at the time) sent a cease and desist letter to Best Brains Inc, the corporate entity behind MST3K.  MTS3K revived interest in the film and the episode was released on a nationally-available cable channel in 1993.  Between 1993 and 2012, no enforcement activity was taken regarding the copyrighted screenplay.  The film has been made available on Youtube, the Internet Archive and had been released at least four times on home video between those two years.  Other riffing of the film in the MST3K vein (not including Rifftrax) has also been done.

The Petrella Decision

However, the Supreme Court's decision in Petrella v. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc., 572 U.S. ___, 134 S. Ct. 1962 (2014) nullifies the above argument.  The facts in Petrella have marked similarities to the situation in Manos.  In Petrella, former middleweight boxing champion Jake LaMotta and his friend Frank Petrella copyrighted a pair of screenplays in 1963 and 1973 and a book in 1970 about LaMotta's life and career. LaMotta's story was acquired by United Artists, a subsidiary of MGM and turned into the award-winning movie Raging Bull, directed by Martin Scorcese and starring Robert DeNiro.  Petrella's estate was able to renew copyright timely to the screenplay registered in 1963, but not the book registered in 1970 or the screenplay registered in 1973.  (The parties disputed which of the three works was published first, and there is no automatic renewal for works published in 1963 or earlier).  The estate warned MGM in 1998 that continued exploitation of the work constituted copyright infringement, and after years of negotiations and threats, filed suit in 2009.

The statute of limitations on a copyright infringement claim is three years from the date which the cause of action accrued.  A cause of action accrues when there is an infringing act such as an "unauthorized" showing of a film or when an unauthorized video release of the film is made for sale.  Each violation can lead to a separate period of limitations during which the copyright holder can seek redress in the courts.  Moreover, even if an earlier infringement had occurred and no action had been taken within the limitations period, it does not cover subsequent infringing activities.  An example can be found with Ben Solovey's activities.  Solovey created a kickstarter campaign to raise money to restore the film.  The kickstarter campaign ended on February 4, 2012 after raising $48,130.  Assuming the kickstarter campaign to restore the film was an infringement on Warren's claimed copyrights, the Trust is too late to sue for it.  However, Solovey presented a "90% complete" version of his workprint version in theaters in August, 2013, and the Trust may still be able to file suit for that act.  More recently, the disc release of the workprint version in October, 2015 is well within the statute of limitations for a copyright infringement claim.

Returning to Petrella, the District Court and the Court of Appeals held that doctrine of laches barred Patricia Petrella's, (Frank Petrella's daughter and heir), claim because she had waited for an unreasonable eighteen years to file suit.  Laches is a judicial doctrine that allows a court to dismiss a lawsuit if there has been unreasonable delay in bringing it.  Her claim would have been dismissed had the Supreme Court not granted her petition for a writ of certiorari.  (Certiorari is the procedure by which the Supreme Court takes appellate cases which it is not obligated to hear).  The Court of Appeals noted that Petrella had not filed suit primarily because the film had not made money in years.  Raging Bull's release on DVD and Blu-ray in the 21st Century helped change that.

The Supreme Court, in a 6-to-3 decision, held that the three year statute of limitations, not laches, governed the ability of a copyright holder to file suit in the face of an infringing act.  Therefore, Petrella's claim should not have been dissmissed because she was guilty of laches.  However, it recognized three umbstantial limitations on Petrella's ability to recover for copyright infringement.

First, Petrella, who filed against MGM in 2009, could only look to MGM's profits from 2006 to 2009.  Any money MGM made on Raging Bull prior to that date was its to keep.

Second, MGM would be entitled to offset its deductible expenses against the profits earned.  In other words, a defendant can point to the expenses incurred to generate the profits and use them to reduce a damages award.  In other words, if Petrella had released Raging Bull, she would have had to incur those costs to generate the profits, so she cannot claim the gross sales of the DVD or the Blu-ray releases.  I could mention that studio accounting practices are notoriously creative in short changing people entitled to shares in the film's profit.

Third, MGM would be able claim that portion of the profit attributable to its efforts separate and distinct from the value of the copyrighted work.  MGM could show that the bulk of the profits from the sales of Raging Bull came primarily from its efforts in producing an award-winning and widely-recognized feature film which is still held in high public esteem today, not from Petrella's screenplay.  If the film did not have Martin Scorcese as a director, its stellar cast or beautiful, yet daring B&W cinematography, it may not have been the success it became.  MGM could also point to its efforts to market a high-quality disc with restored video and audio and included extra features.

Congress enacted the three-year statute of limitations for copyright infringement claims in 1957.  Prior to that, the federal courts looked to analogous state court statute of limitations, if there were any, thus allowing room for laches.  Laches, the Supreme Court recognized, was an equitable doctrine developed by the courts to address issues of fairness and inequity.  The Court further recognized that Congress had, as described above, taken steps to provide for a distinct time frame for which infringement may lie and limitations on remedies to prevent a plaintiff's windfall.  Laches has no place when the legislature has taken affirmative steps to act.

Responding to MGM's argument that the Supreme Court should not award Petrella for sitting on her claims until Raging Bull started to make money, the Court recognized that copyright holders do not have to challenge each and every actionable enforcement.  The Court noted that the harm from many infringements would be too small to justify the cost of litigation.  Moreover, the Plaintiff's delay may cause her to lose critical evidence to her case from the passage of time.  She bears the burden of proving the infringement.

The Court held that there were was an absence of extraordinary facts that would entitle MGM to automatic relief.  This was not a case where the remedy would include the total destruction of the work even though the plaintiff had prior notice of the infringing conduct and did not seek an injunction prior to the defendant investing substantial sums in the project.  In those cases, destruction would have worked an unjust hardship on the defendant and innocent third parties, so the relief was limited to damages.  Finally, when fashioning an equitable remedy such as an injunction, the Court may look to any factors which may arise from the conduct of the parties.

Impact of the Petrella Decision

The similarities of the facts in Petrella and Manos are striking.  Both involve a registered copyright in a screenplay that was later turned, with permission, into a feature film.  Both films, Manos and Raging Bull, were released and thereafter entered into a twilight phase where each film had limited commercial value.  At some point, the original authors of the screenplays died and their rights to renewal of their copyrights passed to their heirs.  Later, these films began to acquire commercial value, however modest in Manos' case.  Finally, the heirs of the screenplay authors have indicated their willingness to make legal threats or file a lawsuit to prevent "unauthorized" distribution of a claimed derivative work (the film).

In Manos' case, there is no distinction to be made in the fact that Hal Warren allowed the film to enter the public domain through his inattentiveness to the copyright formalities.  The film's status as a derivative work of the screenplay is the issue.  If the film is a derivative work of the screenplay, then the Trust has a valid claim to prohibit unauthorized distribution.  The Trust may have a copy of the screenplay, but because it was never published I cannot say how closely the film follows it.  The Trust has probably claimed that because of the multiple hats Hal Warren was wearing during 1966, Screenwriter, Male Lead, Producer and Director, the limited time, talent and resources available to him and the fact that the workprint was labeled "Finggrs [sic] of Fate", the screenplay hews very closely to the finished film.  It is well-known there was no time for reshoots, leading to many of the errors remaining in the Restored Workprint and Theatrical Release version, so it is doubtful there would there be time for rewrites.  (The make out couple is the only example of an ad-hoc addition made during filming due to one of the actresses playing the Master's Wives breaking her leg or foot).  If so, it is governed by Petrella and the three year statute of limitations on copyright claims.  However, if it is more of a rough guide to the plot with liberal revisions made before or when it was being filmed, then it may not be a derivative work but an independent work which was allowed to fall into the public domain and be used by all.

Manos is not the only movie which is in this unique category of a film in the public domain which is controlled as a derivative work from an earlier source.  The classic holiday film It's a Wonderful Life has a similar situation.  The film was based on a short story called the "The Greatest Gift."  The film itself, released in 1946, fell into the public domain in 1974 when the copyright was not renewed due to a clerical error.  The story was published in 1943 privately and 1944 publicly.  Its registration was properly renewed in 1971 by the author.  Thereafter, the author apparently assigned its rights to Republic Pictures, which then was able to regulate the previously-unrestrained TV airings of the film.  Republic also secured rights to the film's soundtrack and held the original negative in its possession, bolstering its claim.  Republic's assets are now owned by Paramount and licenses the rights to show the film.  It's a Wonderful Life will probably fall into the public domain in 2039.

Assuming the Trust files a lawsuit and shows that the film is a derivative work of the screenplay, the real issue is what would happen to the unauthorized versions like the Restored Workprint version?  Based on the Supreme Court's language at the end of Petrella, a trial court would likely confine the remedies to the issue of damages. The Trust could have filed for an injunction to prevent the release of the film either at the film festivals or on disc, but no more than threats were made.  Having waited until after Solovey and Synapse went to the expense of preparing and distributing materials, an permanent injunction against further distribution of the film would not likely be granted.  See New Era Publs. Int'l, ApS v. Henry Holt & Co., 873 F.2d 576, 584-85 (2d Cir. 1989).  Petrella made the distinction that while laches cannot be a bar to suit, it can be considered as an equitable factor when determining the remedy to be granted.

Does Publication of the Unpublished Screenplay Defeat the Unpublished Screenplay's Copyright?

It is also important to note that even though the unpublished screenplay probably was published in the form of the film, the screenplay does not lose protection because the film did.  This is not the situation that was presented in Batjac Prods. v. Goodtimes Home Video Corp., 160 F.3d 1223 (9th Cir. 1998), where the portions of the screenplay for the movie McClintock! that were filmed were deemed to have been published by the film, which had entered the public domain by failure of the film's producers to renew the copyright.  McClintock!  The film McClintock!, starring John Wayne, was published in 1963.  Drafts of the screenplay, the rights to which were assigned to Wayne's production company Batjac, was drafted in 1962 and 1963.  While the copyright was successfully established when the film premiered, it lapsed into the public domain when Batjac failed to renew the copyright by the end of 1991.

The screenplay was not separately unpublished and the author did not apply for copyright protection for an unpublished work.  The Register of Copyrights refused to register the screenplay for copyright protection.  In the meantime Goodtimes Home Video had released a pan & scan version of the film on video.  Batjac sued Goodtimes on the basis of its copyright in the unpublished screenplay.  The District Court and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals held that the screenplay only obtained protection when published in the form of the film and lost that protection when Batjack failed to renew the copyright.

What distinguishes McClintock!'s unpublished screenplay from Fingers of Fate's unpublished screenplay is that Warren had a valid copyright for his unpublished screenplay before he made his film.  McClintock!'s unpublished screenplay did have state common law protection until the Copyright Act of 1976 superseded all state common law protections except as to pre-1972 sound recordings.  The U.S. Copyright Office's Board of Appeals specifically recognized this distinction in its 2002 decision dealing with the film and unregistered screenplay for the film "Husbands" by John Cassavettes.  As recognized and cited by the court in Richlin v. MGM Pictures, Inc., 531 F.3d 962, 975 (9th Cir. 2008), the Board of Appeals' reasoning in its Husbands decision is entitled to deference.

There is scant evidence that Warren abandoned his copyright in Manos.  Although the premiere was disastrous, he did consider redubbing it and re-releasing it as a comedy.  It also played contemporaneously in some west Texas drive-ins.  Although he did forfeit his right to copyright the film by failing to place a copyright notice on it, an affirmative, overt act is required before a court will deem that he abandoned his copyright to his film or his screenplay.  Nat'l Comics Publs., Inc. v. Fawcett Publs., Inc., 191 F.2d 594, 598 (2d Cir. 1951).

But consider the protection afforded to the unpublished screenplay under the applicable law in 1966 when Warren deposited a copy of it, which is the 1909 Copyright Act (as amended).  Section 11 of that act provides for copy protection for works "not reproduced for sale" by depositing one copy of the work if it is a dramatic or musical composition.  But Section 11 continues "But the privilege of registration of copyright secured hereunder shall not exempt the copyright proprietor from the deposit of copies under sections twelve and thirteen of this Act where the work is later reproduced in copies for sale."  Section 13 provides that if two copies of the work is not deposited within three or six months after a demand from the register of copyrights, the copyright will become void.  In the 1976 Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 408(e) no longer requires this : "Published edition of previously registered work. Registration for the first published edition of a work previously registered in unpublished form may be made even though the work as published is substantially the same as the unpublished version."

The text of the 1909 act does not dispossess an author of copyright protection unless and until the register makes a demand.  Even if the Fingers of Fate screenplay was published when the film Manos The Hands of Fate was first shown, unless a demand was made, Manos' screenplay would not fall outside the protection of the statute.  Given Manos' was a very obscure film, a demand for it would be extremely unlikely.

Before we conclude with this issue, one thing that must be addressed is the effect that a proper registration has on an action for copyright infringement.  Simply put, without registration there can be no copyright infringement claim.  The only claim a copyright holder can make without registration is against someone who has falsely attributed the authorship of the work or to prevent attacks to the integrity of the work.  In this case, two copies of the screenplay must be deposited with the LoC.  As the Restoration does not do either of those things, the Trust must produce the screenplay.  Alternatively, it could try to persuade the Copyright Office to accept the film as the screenplay.

Conclusion

Even though the film Manos: The Hands of Fate may be in the public domain, the Trust may still be able to maintain control over the exploitation of the film to the extent that it is a derivative work of the copyrighted screenplay.  However, it bears the burden of proving the infringement, which also means it bears the burden of either producing the screenplay or otherwise proving its contents.  Assuming that it can do this and show that the film is a derivative work of the screenplay, what would happen?

The Trust may end up arguing in Court that it is entitled to the profits from the Synapse films release and perhaps an injunction against further dissemination of the film in any form from Solovey and Synapse. In court it may well have a serious difficulty in showing that the screenplay entitles it to profit.  The screenplay is but one part of Manos' charm and reasons for the public's continued interest in the film.  The restoration, which the Trust had no part of, was the driving factor behind the sales.  Indeed, had it not been for the MTS3K episode so memorably mocking it back in 1993, Manos would have been confined to a footnote in El Paso's local history.  The lack of any substantial financial incentive is what may save the Restored Workprint version from being taken out of circulation.  (Rifftrax came to an arrangement with the Trust, http://www.playboy.com/articles/the-battle-over-the-worst-movie-ever, so its version is in no jeopardy.  I do not know about the MST3K version currently released by Shout Factory!).

However, let us consider the issue of statutory damages as an alternative to proved damages.  There are two categories of statutory damages. The first is where a plaintiff elects to decline to prove damages and the court can award from $750-$30,000 for each infringed work per defendant.  17 U.S.C. § 504.  However, courts can by statute award attorney's fees, which can become quite substantial, to the prevailing party.  17 U.S.C. § 505.  Moreover, there is an issue of "willful" statutory infringement.  If a plaintiff can prove "willful" infringement, namely that the infringement occurred with knowledge of the copyright claim or reckless disregard of the copyright status of the infringed work, the Court can enhance damages up to $150,000.  However, if the infringer was not aware and had no reason to believe that his or her acts constituted an infringement of copyright, then the Court can reduce damages to no less than $200.

In this case, the Trust would argue that its communications with Solovey and other parties should have put them on notice that their activities constituted infringement.  Solovey could counter that he secured legal advice indicating that Manos was in the public domain and thus should not be liable for willful infringement.  Unless the Trust provided him with a copy of the screenplay prior to his releasing of his restoration or at least a citation to the correct volume of the Copyright Catalog, it may have a difficult time showing he willfully infringed on the Trust's copyright.  Without that, Solovey may not have been on notice of a valid copyright claim.

It should not have taken any great insight from an experienced copyright attorney to have considered that the screenplay may have been copyrighted in an unpublished form independently of the film.  As I indicated above, this was a very common practice according to the Copyright Catalog during the era in which Manos was made.  Having realized the possibility, it would have not been a particularly onerous search to look in the Copyright Catalog covering the year 1966.  The Copyright Catalog has an author index and Hal Warren's name is there.  The Copyright Catalog is freely available through the Copyright Office, and I was able to locate the citation printed above with no great difficulty.

While the Supreme Court decided Petrella on May 19, 2014, a defense based on the uncertainty of the law prior to the Petrella decision would not likely work.  Petrella focused on a defense to copyright, not whether there was a valid copyright claim.  If one party had successfully asserted a laches defense against a copyright holder prior to Petrella, that would not necessarily have allowed the copyright to enter the public domain de facto. Laches is always applied on a case by case basis, Kourtis v. Cameron, 419 F.3d 989, 1000 (9th Cir. 2005), so a subsequent infringer cannot simply point to a judgment in favor of a previous infringer and prevail on the basis of collateral estoppel.  (Collateal estoppel bars a party from contesting an issue in a subsequent lawsuit that had been previously decided in a prior lawsuit to which it was a party.)  Typically a successful laches claim may have the effect of insulating a period of prior infringement activity by anybody. However, it may not have applied to not future activity once the copyright holder had shown renewed vigilance unless there is a fundamental issue regarding proof of the content of the infringing work as discussed in the dissenting opinion in Petrella.

Solovey may argue that his restoration was transformative, which is a type of fair use defense to copyright infringement, namely that by restoring a once-faded and scratchy film into something far superior he has allowed viewers to gain new insight into the original work. His registration of copyright in his restoration would give some weight because registration gives a litigant a legal presumption of a valid copyright claim.  This would be a tricky argument to make in the light of a dearth of case law regarding the copyright protections granted to film restorations.

However, the differences between the Restored Workprint and the Original Theatrical Release versions are negligible in terms of the story they tell.  The four fair use factors cited in 17 U.S.C. § 107 do not favor the Restored Workprint version.  The first factor looks to the purpose and character of the use.  The Restored Workprint was released for a commercial purpose, Solovey did not put his work in the public domain but copyrighted it and released it through a commercial film distributor, Synapse.  The film presumably takes most, if not all the screenplay and puts it on screen.  The second factor, nature of the copyrighted work, tends to distinguish between factual and fictional works, and Manos falls wholly within the fictional category.  The third factor, amount and substantiality, and the Restored Workprint probably is a filmed version of the Fingers of Fate screenplay. The Restored Workprint version aimed to be the definitive edition of Manos and would have a non-negligible effect on the value of the screenplay.  There was a limited market for the original work and the Restored Workprint version has not helped further efforts to market the original story.

The parody film FELT : The Puppet Hands of Fate would fare better in this regard.  If MST3K was able to rely on the transformative exception, then it could release everything it ever broadcast without regard to the rights holders of the underlying films it parodied.  MST3K does not, it seeks a license from the rights holders for any non-public domain films before releasing them on DVD or via streaming.