So what I am have been trying to say is that I, personally, find it much more plausible that lawyers at Cadence/Marvel erroneously filed renewals on a title they thought they owned than that a company like Cadence/Marvel cherry-picked one odd title to buy from a small defunct comic company and that no one over the years in the fan press has ever picked up on it or made note of it before.
But there's evidence that Cadence/Marvel had done that very thing with other titles from other defunct publishers, specifically the Hardie-Kelly books
(Flying Models, Melodyland, etc which I mentioned previously and really the only books I've ever investigated at length, so there likely are other titles from other publishers that I'm not aware of). Cadence did not acquire everything Hardie & Kelly published. The pair apparently sold-off the Harle crossword titles to Kappa Publishing Group
(I say "apparently" because I'm not sure if H&K sold the mags to Kappa directly or if there was an ownership group in-between), and the bulk of their remaining publications (including most of their humor digests & many of their regular magazine titles) weren't sold to Cadence or anyone else. If "Unknown Worlds" was the only example I found where Cadence/Marvel were filing renewals for a title they never published, then I would be agreeing with your assessment of the situation, but history shows that Cadence was cherry-picking titles from other publishers.
If they did actually buy the rights to the title from ACG then the renewals are valid. If they were made in error then they are not valid.
For now, we should stay away from the title until we have time to investigate it further.
If it were my decision (which I know it isn't), even if you're right and the renewals are nothing more than an error, I would still stay away from the books as long as the Copyright Office believes that Marvel owns the title.
I do thank you for bringing this to our attention and have not intended to antagonize you with my replies. If I gave you that impression, I again apologize.
No need to apologize, I did not feel as though you were antagonizing me with your responses. We were both sharing our opinions of what made the most sense to each of us regarding this title based on what we know.
Btw, there are Copyright Catalog books of film copyright registrations that have been available to the public for decades, There are also books called Film Superlists that not only list films with copyright dates and numbers but also have renewal dates and numbers. I have copies of the later covering films released through 1959. Some libraries carry them if you ever want to check them out. They are rather pricey to buy.
Mostly they are used by film researchers or by film/video dealers to check on copyright status. There have been a few cases of individuals using the copyright dates and numbers contained in the books in attempts to gain rights to films. None have ever been successful as far as I know.
I've heard about those books, but I'm not as interested in film Copyrights as I am with comic book Copyrights.
