Nguyễn Ngọc Loan executes Viet Cong Captain Nguyễn Văn Lém. This Associated Press photograph won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography. Film also exists of this event, but owing to the more graphic nature of the film, the photograph is more widely known.

BBC News, "Eddie Adams' iconic Vietnam War photo: What happened next". Originally published in 1968. Cropped from source image to reflect the portion that was published in newspapers in 1968.

1968-02-01

Eddie Adams, Associated Press

The photo was published simultaneously in many newspapers, some of which had no copyright notice at all (neither for the photo in particular, nor for the newspaper as a whole). For example:

• The Baltimore Sun
• Des Moines Tribune
• Tallahassee Democrat
• The Capital Times
• The Miami News
• The Nashville Tennessean
• Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
• The Arizona Republic
• The Kansas City Times
• The Charlotte Observer
• The Salt Lake Tribune

Copyright was therefore forfeited per section 9 of the Copyright Act of 1909, which required that notice of copyright be affixed to every published copy.

The photo's country of origin is unclear, as it was distributed by the Associated Press and may have been published simultaneously in any number of countries. Per the Berne Convention's definition of "country of origin", the country with the shortest copyright term out of those where the photo was published would be the country of origin. Thus it is likely that the photo will be eligible for transfer to Wikimedia Commons on January 1, 2055, 50 years after the photographer's death, the shortest copyright term allowed among Berne Convention countries.