Copyright Registrations = Copyright Free

The U.S. Copyright Office has confirmed that U.S. Copyright Registrations are in the public domain. Marybeth Peters, the Register of Copyrights, writes: "There is no copyright protection in these records -- they are in the public domain." This is a good clear answer for which Marybeth, Carl Malamud of Public Resource and Peter Brantley of the Digital Library Federation should be heartily thanked.
In celebration (and thanks) I have put one of their Copyright Registration feeds on this blog. Already it has payed dividends with my discovery of an assignment of a security interest in "Four Dogs Playing Poker" between Mercantile National Bank and International Entertainment Corporation. More history of the work is available from the Copyright Office. I had thought that "Four Dogs Playing Poker" was the title of the famous painting of four dogs playing poker, but in fact, it isn't. What I was thinking of is a series of sixteen paintings by C. M. Coolidge commissioned to advertise cigars. Maybe the subject of the assignment is the movie by that name (a thumbnail of its poster is incorporated here, click on the image to purchase the DVD) but that's unclear from what I could find.