Misplaced Pages

Screencap of the gun barrel sequence that appears at the start of most James Bond films

Dr. No trailer

1962

Danjaq and United Artists

Prior to 1978, trailers in the United States required their own copyright notice to prevent them from falling into the public domain, due to the fact that the trailer was published before the film, so was not protected by the copyright on the film, as was the case for the first three James Bond films. However, since the trailer for Dr. No was first published in the United Kingdom, its UK copyright was invoked first, and therefore is still under copyright in that country. Following the Uruguay Round Agreements Act, some copyrights were restored to foreign works residing in the US public domain; however this is not the case for the Dr. No trailer since it was authored by United Artists using material owned by Danjaq (the sole copyright holder on the early Bond films) which are both US incorporated companies. As such, the trailer for Dr. No is in the public domain in the United States, but not necessarily in other countries, making it ineligible to be hosted on Commons. See for a more thorough explanation. Carl Lindberg concluded: "Country of origin" is generally defined as country of first publication, so if that is the UK, there is no hope of PD status there, and Commons needs to respect that status. If the trailer did predate the movie in the UK, and that trailer had no copyright notice, then its US copyright was lost at the time, and not restored.

PD-US Public domain in the United States //en.wikipedia.org/File:Dr_No_trailer.jpg