Corinth Films claims the film site has been showing the subtitled version of Vittorio De Sica’s classic tale of poverty-stricken postwar Rome without obtaining rights

Netflix has been accused of illegally streaming the classic Italian neo-realist drama Bicycle Thieves.

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Corinth Films, which claims copyright for Vittorio De Sica’s famous 1948 tale of poverty-stricken postwar Rome, has filed a suit in a New York federal court. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the company accepts that Bicycle Thieves is in the public domain in the US but suggests the subtitled version of the film, which Netflix has previously included on its service, remains under copyright.

“At no time have defendants contacted the plaintiff in order to seek its license for the internet exhibition of the picture, either in whole or in excerpted portions,” the complaint reads. “Despite lacking any rights to exhibit the English subtitled version of the picture, defendants act as though they have exhibition rights.”

Bicycle Thieves, which is also known as The Bicycle Thief in the US, is considered by critics to be one of the greatest films of all time. In a 2008 review for the film’s re-release, The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw described De Sica’s harrowing drama as a “brilliant, tactlessly real work of art”.

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The confusion over Bicycle Thieves’ status reportedly stems from a 1985 US court ruling in which a judge ruled the film to be in the public domain because neither side in a dispute over rights had taken the time to re-register its copyright. The judge said in his ruling that the subtitled or dubbed version might remain under copyright as a derivative work, leading to Corinth Films’ complaint.

The company is claiming damages for copyright infringement and false designation of origin. It also wants an injunction on the subtitled version of the film. Netflix has not yet made any public comment on the case.

Bicycle Thieves has also streamed on the UK version of Netflix in the past, though it is not currently streaming.