Պատկեր:Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939 poster).jpg

English: Scan via Heritage Auctions. Cropped from the original image.

English: Illustrator unknown; work-for-hire on behalf of Columbia Pictures.

English: The poster included a defective copyright notice, seen at bottom left: "Copyrighted by Columbia Pictures Corp., New York". The notice omits the year of publication, 1939 (the film's theatrical release came in October 1939, so it is unlikely that the poster was published the previous year).

Even if the notice is deemed sufficient, the copyright for the artwork was not renewed, as was required by American copyright law to extend/maintain protection for works published 1963 or earlier. In order to maintain copyright protection, the poster would have had to be renewed 28 years after publication, in either 1966 or 1967 (see the sections for "Artwork: Original registrations and renewals" and refer to the links to search the copyright catalogs for those years). Because it was not renewed, copyright lapsed at that time. Note that the poster art is a distinct work from the film it represents and had to be renewed separately.