WHAT DIFFERENCE A © MAKES

"They're coming to get you, Barbra."

One of the greatest movies ever made and the flagship horror film of the last 100 years was George Romero's 1968 production of Night of the Living Dead. While its significance can be measured in so many different ways (and probably will be in future Henry's Daily Factoids), for now it is merely adequate to state that it started the whole genre of cannibalistic zombies in cinema and TV. With the abundance of gore in today's cinema, it is hard to imagine the shocking impact that a movie graphically displaying flesh-eating ghouls had on the unsuspecting audiences in 1968.

Due to the well-deserved popularity and ubiquitous viewing of the movie, you would think that Romero and his co-writer John Russo would be gazillionaires from the royalties from the project.  However, on the initial print of the film, Romero had it titled in the opening credits as "Night of the Flesh-Eaters©." The distributor of the film changed the title to "Night of the Living Dead" before releasing it. Under intellectual property law as it existed in 1968, the failure to include the copyright symbol (©) in the new title meant that the movie immediately translocated into the public domain. As a result, numerous distributors copied and displayed it legally without having to pay any royalties to Romero or Russo. Romero did sue the distributing company for its error, but it went bankrupt before he could collect anything.

Romero's and Russo's loss is society's gain. Because flesh-eating zombies were immediately thrust into the public domain, hundreds of deliciously dark and diabolical minds have been able to incorporate them freely, along with their attributes created in the original screenplay (such as lethargic walking, disquieting dietary habits, and vulnerability to brain injury), into other movies, TV shows, books, and comics without having to parse the legal technicalities of copyright law.

It also means that I can link you to the entire movie here. Enjoy.