Evidence standard

Show what the public record supports. Stop where it stops.

FilmRightsProof is designed around primary-source U.S. Copyright Office records and explicit uncertainty. Derived intelligence can organize evidence, but it never becomes a substitute evidence authority.

Phase 0 proof

262real normalized source records
50/50benchmark expected records ranked first
28source-backed graph edges
0unsafe confident benchmark mismatches

Authoritative sources

The durable evidence substrate is the U.S. Copyright Office January 2026 bulk release. The tested collections include motion pictures or filmstrips, dramatic works, non-dramatic literary works, terminations, renewals and general recordations. FilmRightsProof also performs bounded on-demand verification against the Copyright Public Records System for current registration and recordation evidence.

Coverage and freshness

The reproducible bulk release is bounded through June 27, 2025. Current CPRS lookup is a bounded adapter over the Copyright Office public system, not a claim of exhaustive current coverage. Every public search and trace separates network transport, response parsing, usable evidence, valid zero hits, normalization failure, partial/truncated results, cached evidence and actual evidence observation time. If the source is unavailable, FilmRightsProof describes the bulk/cached evidence actually used rather than pretending the result was observed today.

The CPRS machine-readable endpoint is not treated as a guaranteed permanent developer API, so source failure and search bounds are part of the evidence contract.

Recordation semantics

Copyright Office recordations may label parties only as first party and second party. FilmRightsProof preserves those labels and may connect them to the same recorded document, but does not infer assignor/assignee direction, present ownership, scope, validity or legal effect unless the source explicitly supplies transfer-oriented roles.

What public records cannot prove alone

  • complete private chain of title
  • all unrecorded assignments or licenses
  • present legal ownership in every circumstance
  • the validity or interpretation of a private contract
  • title clearance or E&O clearance
  • that a search miss means no rights exist
Core rule

FilmRightsProof should prefer an explicit evidence gap or safe ambiguity result over a convenient conclusion that the source cannot support.