Photo of Amelia Earhart in 1935. Earhart played herself in a radio dramatization of her Honolulu to Oakland flight. The program aired in three segments on NBC Radio.
I am aware that Corbis offers an identical copy of the photo as part of their Bettmann Premium. The Corbis copy also says it was taken in 1935 and was originally from NBC to publicize Earhart's appearance on the NBC Radio drama. However, Bettmann/Corbis claims a copyright on this photo.
Original copyright registrations in artwork were examined for the year 1935. The volume lists artwork registrations for the years 1935-1937. The only registrations for photos of Amelia Earhart from this timeframe were registered in August, 1937; they were registered to entities other than National Broadcasting Company or Bettmann-to Frederick W. Schweigart, to Ruth C. White and to Edith Alice Scott. These photographs were registered more than two years after this 1935 photograph.
Further checks were made in copyright renewals for artwork for the years 1962 and 1963. There were no renewals for NBC/National Broadcasting Company, nor any for Bettmann, whose archive a copy of it is part of. There's no proof of original registration for either NBC or Bettmann, nor any renewal history from either company with regard to this photo. There is no evidence that the claim of copyright by Corbis/Bettmann is a valid one.
Note that it may still be copyrighted in jurisdictions that do not apply the rule of the shorter term for US works (depending on the date of the author's death), such as Canada (50 p.m.a.), Mainland China (50 p.m.a., not Hong Kong or Macao), Germany (70 p.m.a.), Mexico (100 p.m.a.), Switzerland (70 p.m.a.), and other countries with individual treaties.
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