Secret Teachings of All Ages: Copyright Status

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Additional Claims (post 1978)

THE SECRET TEACHINGS OF ALL AGES: COPYRIGHT STATUS.

There is more than sufficient evidence online to validate the claim that the work "The Secret Teachings of All Ages," published in 1928, is currently in the public domain. This is based on the legal requirement that a work published during the period 1923-1963 (inclusive) had to be renewed at the US Copyright Office in the 28th year. In practice, the renewals for books published in 1928 were published in 1955 through 1957.

First of all, take a look at an independent report on the copyright status of this book:

118046311.pdf [PDF File, 55Kb]

This indicates that while this book was originally registered on May 28th, 1928, 'No renewal [was] found.' The report was generated by Thompson and Thompson, a highly respected legal firm in the intellectual property field.

If no renewal is found, the book's copyright has lapsed. We believe that this can be also more than adequately demonstrated using online resources.

DIGEST

Excerpt: This lists all works properly renewed at the US Copyright Office for the year 1928, collated by year of publication and sorted by title. This page relates to books whose titles begin with the letters S through T (ignoring initial definite and indefinite articles, e.g. 'the'). These renewals were published in the copyright renewal register during the years 1955-7. The following is the listings under the word 'Secret'. If "The Secret Teachings of All Ages" was renewed properly, it would have been listed following 'The Secret Brotherhood,' below.

Title	Author	Registration & Renewal	Renewer
...	...	...	...
The Sea Mystery	Freeman Wills Crofts	10Aug28:A1083663 19Sep55:R156402	(A)
Seaports In The Moon	Vincent Starrett	23Mar28:A1069816 28Mar55:R147415	(A)
Second Year At The Piano	John M Williams	16Nov28:A2887 2Dec55:R160974	(A)
The Secret Brotherhood	John G Brandon	24Aug28:A1053060 8Nov55:R159072	(A)
Selected Poems	Robert Frost	19Nov28:A4153 22Nov55:R160092	(A)
The Self, Its Body And Freedom	William Ernest Hocking	23Mar28:A1069531 24Aug55:R154877	(A)
Sergeant Eadie	Leonard H Nason	24Feb28:A1069428 1Mar55:R145799	(A)
...	...	...	...

PAGE IMAGES

Page images of the renewals relating to Secret Teachings of All Ages can be found at the following locations:

These are organized by the last name of the author.

The following are TIFF files which have the page images from the original copyright office publication. The files are in the 'TIF' format (which can't normally be viewed in your browser unless you have a plug-in such as quicktime). You can verify that there is no listing for 'Hall, Palmer' on the following pages, by downloading the files to your hard drive and then opening them in any image viewer. Although this can be laborious, these are the source documents for any renewal search.

1955

(Haldeman-Julius Co. (cont.)--Hartill)

(Haldeman-Julius Co. (cont.)--Haycox, Ernest (start))

1956

(Haldeman-Julius Co (cont.)--Hebditch)

(Halevy--Hauman)

1957

(Gwynn, Stephen--Hamlin)

(Grey, Zane--Hall, J Lincoln (start))

(Hall, J Lincoln (cont.)--Hart, Basil Henry Liddell)

SEARCHABLE TEXT

Searchable text files are available from Project Gutenberg and Distributed Proofing for the years in question.

These files have a complete transcript of all renewals for the years in question. There are six files, two for each year:

1955

1956

1957

We downloaded these files and used a text search utility to look for the following terms: "Manly" "Palmer" "Hall" "Secret" "Teachings" "Ages" "Philosophical" "Research". We also loaded each of these files into a word processor and searched for the same set of terms so we could view hits in context. You can verify this by downloading these files and doing likewise.

Following is the transcript of that search. The numbers refer to the line number in the file that the given search string was found on. The search was performed using 'grep -in', which produces a case-insensitive, word-boundary-insensitive, line-numbered search. As can be seen, there is no trace of a renewal for "The Secret Teachings of All Ages" here either, nor "Many Palmer Hall", nor "Philosophical Research".

"=== Manly ==="

File 11811-8.TXT:

3981        John Matthews Manly.

14795   MANLY, JOHN MATTHEWS.

File 11814-8.TXT:

3807      The writing of English. SEE Manly,

7027      The writing of English. SEE Manly,

12539   MANLY, JOHN MATTHEWS.

12542       Matthews Manly, Edith Rickert and

12546       M. Manly); 10Sep56; R176729.

14514     The writing of English. SEE Manly,

15510     The writing of English. SEE Manly,

File 11815-8.TXT:

16056   MANLY, JOHN MATTHEWS.

16059       by John Matthews Manly and Edith

17073       SEE Manly, John Matthews.

20602       SEE Manly, John Matthews.

"=== Palmer ==="

File 11811-8.TXT:

1802        John Palmer. © 21Oct27,

1805        (W) & Anthony Palmer (C);

2541        Palmer. © 21Jan28; A1065547.

2638        © 4Nov27; A1004988. Jaime Palmer,

2639        M. F. Palmer & Carl Van Sant (E);

7441        Palmer.

7456        Hartsough, Palmer.

7474        Palmer.

7486        Hartsough, Palmer.

10294   HARTSOUGH, PALMER.

17345   PALMER, ANTHONY.

17351   PALMER, JAIME.

17357   PALMER, JOHN.

17364   PALMER, M. F.

17370   PALMER, PAUL L.

19872       with John Palmer  SEE

File 11812-8.TXT:

1630        Beeding, pseud. of John Palmer

1634        Palmer (C); 12Sep55; R155568.

14587   PALMER, ANTHONY.

14593   PALMER, JOHN.

16809       John Palmer SEE Beeding, Francis.

File 11813-8.TXT:

1818        pseud. of John Leslie Palmer and

1822        Saunders (W) & Anthony Palmer (C);

12448   LUCAS, WILLIAM PALMER.

12452       William Palmer Lucas and Alfred

12454       William Palmer Lucas (A); 17Jan56;

13847     College algebra. SEE Palmer, Claude

15227   PALMER, ANTHONY.

15233   PALMER, CLARK F.

15235     College algebra. SEE Palmer,

15239   PALMER, CLAUDE IRWIN.

15242       Palmer and Wilson Lee Miser.

15244       Palmer & Ethel Palmer Swantz (C)

15249   PALMER, HERMAN, illus.

15255   PALMER, JOHN LESLIE.

15262   PALMER, WINTHROP B.

15267       Palmer (A); 15Mar56; R166488.

16058   RAND, BELLE PALMER.

16067       © 7Sep28; A1054339. Belle Palmer

17298       by Herman Palmer. © 22Mar29;

17363       with John Leslie Palmer SEE

19320   SWANTZ, ETHEL PALMER.

19322     College algebra. SEE Palmer,

21080       William Palmer.

File 11814-8.TXT:

1475        pseud. of John Palmer and

1478        Saunders & Anthony Palmer (C);

14371   PALMER, ANTHONY.

14377   PALMER, JOHN.

16268       with John Palmer SEE Beeding,

File 11815-8.TXT:

2081        Saunders and John Leslie Palmer.

2084        Saunders) & Anthony Palmer (C of

2085        J. Palmer); 3May57; R191110.

4514        boys T. B. B. SEE Clark, Palmer J.

4855    CLARK, PALMER J.

19013   PALMER, ANTHONY.

19019   PALMER, BEN W.

19026   PALMER, ERIC, JR.

19029       Palmer, Jr. © 15Mar30; A20428.

19030       Eric Palmer, Jr. (A); 2May57;

19034   PALMER, JOHN LESLIE.

19042   PALMER, JOHN MCAULEY.

19047       Laning Palmer (W); 25Feb57;

19051   PALMER, MAUDE LANING.

19054       Palmer, John Mcauley.

19413       Palmer, John Mcauley.

21645       with John Leslie Palmer. SEE

26917     Manual of Minnesota law. SEE Palmer,

File 11816-8.TXT:

1611        Palmer and Hilary A. St. George

1614        & Anthony Palmer (C); 23Aug57;

9687        by George Herbert Palmer, with

15709   PALMER, ANTHONY.

15715   PALMER, CLARK  F.

15717     Practical mathematics. SEE Palmer,

15721   PALMER, CLAUDE IRWIN.