This work is in the public domain because it was published in the United States between 1930 and 1963, and although there may or may not have been a copyright notice, the copyright was not renewed. For further explanation, see Commons:Hirtle chart and the copyright renewal logs. Note that it may still be copyrighted in jurisdictions that do not apply the rule of the shorter term for US works (depending on the date of the author's death), such as Canada (70 years p.m.a.), Mainland China (50 years p.m.a., not Hong Kong or Macao), Germany (70 years p.m.a.), Mexico (100 years p.m.a.), Switzerland (70 years p.m.a.), and other countries with individual treaties. العربية ∙ Deutsch ∙ English ∙ español ∙ français ∙ galego ∙ italiano ∙ 日本語 ∙ 한국어 ∙ македонски ∙ português ∙ português do Brasil ∙ русский ∙ sicilianu ∙ slovenščina ∙ українська ∙ 简体中文 ∙ 繁體中文 ∙ +/−

The film was published in 1939. Copyright would therefore have to have been renewed in 1966 or 1967. A search of the 1966 and 1967 copyright catalogs found no applicable renewals. Hearst newsreels from November 14, 1939 onward were renewed under the title News of the Day, but renewals from before that date were not found.

Further evidence is found in Hearst Corp. v. United States, 28 Fed. Cl. 202 (1993). In this court opinion, Hearst's donation of its newsreel collection to UCLA is described in detail. The donated assets are listed as including "Volumes 1-20 of the Hearst Metrotone Newsreel and News of the Day" and "Copyrights pertaining to Volumes 11-20 of the Hearst Metrotone Newsreel and News of the Day", while the copyrights pertaining to Volumes 1-10 are not listed. (Volume 11 began in 1939.) The reasonable inference is that Hearst was aware that newsreels from 1939 and earlier were not under copyright.