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Since you said "all of legal history", yes, there are loads of cases. Prior to 1976, in the US, maintaining copyright required doing several steps such that if

Since you said "all of legal history", yes, there are loads of cases. Prior to 1976, in the US, maintaining copyright required doing several steps such that if you failed to do any one of those steps, you lost copyright for good. Failing to renew copyright registration is one of those, and one classic film (It's a Wonderful Life) is public domain because its owner did precisely that. Post-1976, screwing up copyright formalities means relatively little in copyright (the biggest thing is you lose the ability to sue for statutory damages if you don't register copyright). Eventually, there's going to be legal confusion over what year protections run out, but that isn't going to be relevant for software until quite late this century thanks to the current 95-year copyright regimes.

lapcat 4y ago
More info: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2TYK2NfhJ6pmDqW8rfT4LCf/its-a-wonderful-life-from-festive-flop-to-christmas-classic https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2TYK2NfhJ6pmDqW8rf... But that is not the same thing as updating the copyright year on a copyright notice, and you know it. A film like "It's a Wonderful Life" is a finished work that never changes, unlike software or web sites. In every film, the copyright notice in the credits will remain forever the same. It can't be changed without editing the film ex post facto a la Steven Spielberg or George Lucas. Even if the copyright of "It's a Wonderful Life" had been renewed, the copyright notice in the credits would not have changed.