copyright and "The Jungle Book"

(Was: benefits of the public domain and limited copyright terms?)

On Sat, 6 May 2000, Lance Purple <lpurple[_at_]netcom.com> wrote:
>
> Most of Walt Disney's animated films were based on public-domain
> works published in the 1800's. . . . _Jungle Book_ (released exactly
> one year after Kipling's copyrights expired),

Is this accurate?

If I've checked my facts correctly, Kipling's "The Jungle Book" was published in 1899.[1] The U.S. copyright statute that would have controlled at expiration would have been the 1909 copyright act, which provided for a 56-year copyright term (28, plus another 28 on renewal). This would have Kipling's copyright expire in 1955.[2]

According to the Internet Movie Database, Disney's "The Jungle Book" was released in 1967, eleven years after the Kipling copyright expired.[3]

[1] I ran a LoC catalog search at
<http://catalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?DB=local&PAGE=hbSearch> for call no. "PR 4854 .S27," the Jungle Book's call number. It says:

    LC Control Number: 07041592
    Type of Material: Book (Print, Microform, Electronic, etc.)     Brief Description: Kipling, Rudyard, 1865-1936.     The jungle book, by Rudyard Kipling. 62d thousand.     New York, The Century co., 1899.
    2 p.l., ix-xiii, [2], 303 p. incl. illus., plates. front. 20 cm.

[2] There was a series of ab interim laws enacted in Congress in the sixties and seventies, to keep copyrights that would otherwise expire alive, but the earliest of these was Pub.L. 87-668, in the early 1960s; it wouldn't have affected a 1955 expiration.

[3] See <http://us.imdb.com/Details?0061852>.

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Terry Carroll         |   "The United States is located in
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