Hi, I need to find out if Rudolph Fisher's short story "John Archer's Nose" from 1935 is public domain. Fisher died that same year as it was published in Metropolitan Magazine. That means that the story should be public domain in life + 70 years counties at least. However, is it PD in the US?
This is a rather thorny question. John Archer's Nose appears to be a work to which section 304(a)(1)(C) of the U.S. Copyright Act applies.
I will say so much: if Rudolph Fisher's heirs or assignees did not apply for an extension of the copyright, then at this time the work would be in the public domain in the U.S.
I appreciate that this answer is less than satisfactory for practical purposes.
Agree with Michael Lusk -- can't know for sure unless you know whether its copyright was renewed. Penn has a nice resource for this at https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/renewals.html; you'd be looking for a 1961 or 1962 renewal. But it is not foolproof and you might need to know the book or magazine in which it was originally published. Another way to try to check is to see where it's been republished recently, like here: https://books.google.com/books?id=vLBmDwAAQBAJ&dq=City+of+Refuge+fisher&source=gbs_navlinks_s, and see if the publisher included any copyright info.
A story published in 1935, if copyrighted and renewed is still under copyright. The complication is …. who holds the copyright ?... the Magazine? the author? and was it copyrighted and renewed?
Right -- the copyright system does seem to be unworkable.
The U.S. Copyright Office maintains a register of copyrighted works, but a copyright can exist in the absence of such registration.
Nevertheless, before declaring that the cost of establishing whether Rudolph Fischer's story remains under copyright may exceed the revenue that might be earned by republishing the work, I tried Google.
It turns out that in 2017 HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd republished John Archer's Nose as an addendum to Rudolph Fisher's better known work The Conjure-Man Dies. According to the corresponding imprint, the publisher asserts copyright only in relation to the current cover layout design and the Ebook Edition. No other copyright is disclosed. By implication (but without warranty), John Archer's Nose is in the public domain in the U.S. and in the U.K.
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