Copyright Aid

Thank you for all your advice. I'm sure the British Library and National Archives have legal staff on hand with which I can now fine tune my alternative project (which I won't bore you with here). It's nice to know that I can whack up my personal correspondence archive for free without risk of being...

In the copyright sense, publication is generally defined as issuing copies of a work to the public in a way that satisfies the reasonable requirements of that public.... A special provision was made for the unpublished pre-1912 works whereby they would come out of copyright fifty years after the Ac...

Just to query a point or two (if you don't mind, I accept that I've presumed considerably on your time in the last 24 hours and am extremely grateful regardless). -At what stage do I count as 'publishing' the material? Does the fact that it's my own research database and in active use as such and pr...

One more query, if you'd be so kind. This one a little more related to my usual sort of question. T To briefly recap, any unpublished gray material was held to be indefinitely subject to copyright until 1989; when the 2039 rule came in. I know from my own work, and a question or two on this forum, t...

It sounds to me as if it what you are saying is that it possible for both Company B and Customer Z to jointly be responsible for the purchase of license, but if company A disliked the concept and thought it breached the license terms, they could attempt a suit of both parties. Certainly not a positi...

So here's the deal. A sector that I'm interested in has seen a massive rise in the sale of 3d files for printing from various artists/companies/manufacturers. They don't sell a physical product, what they sell is a license for the purchaser to print domestically for themselves using the provided fil...

'Where a work is made by Her Majesty or by an officer or servant of the Crown in the course of his duties'. ' To me, this is the nub of it. I read a lot of old correspondence by 'servants of the Crown', but they have a really awkward way of intermingling the personal and public as it were. So it mak...

Okay. According to my understanding, unpublished literary material remains in copyright until 2039. That being said, when does what a person does technically qualify as Crown Copyright? Take the following cases:- 1. A Government Minister pencilling off a note relating to the business of his departme...

Ha, well, I'm thinking of trying to set up a site with certain historical documents from a variety of sources for educational/collaborative research purposes. Being the careful fellow that I am though; I'm trying to ensure that nobody has a legal leg to stand on for challenging what I put onto it. F...

I see. That clears that up then. Many thanks on that; I'm working with a family right now in the above described situation to try and figure out which of them actually possesses the copyright. Time to start digging up the wills!

Hmmm... So if copyright is inherited along with possession; where does the copyright go once the documents have been given away (say, for tax relief), and we've moved on a couple of generations? Say my great-grandfather left my grandfather the documents in his will (and not to his three siblings), m...

Firstly, thank you for the succinct reply. Since you indicate that it is not entirely clear cut; it seems to me to be worth further consideration. You think that modification of an image would technically qualify as a derivative work, and I can see the reasoning. Flipping it around then, rather than...

In many archives I have visited, one is asked to fill out a disclaimer form in which you agree to ask permission from the archive before reproducing any items photographed within. Several have also claimed ownership over items which are clearly not in copyright or something they could own copyright ...

Until recently, copyright for industrial design was limited to twenty five years. In the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act of 2013 however, this was extended to the life of the artist plus 70 years. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2013/24/part/6/crossheading/copyright-and-rights-in-performanc...

To my knowledge, published works from back in the ninteenth century are well out of copyright. Yet a number of journal and online access providers claim that their plonking an out of copyright item on top of a flatbed scanner generates a new copyright for that image specifically; even though it is a...