Images in Old Journals

[Jason210]

Hi

What is the law concerning the use of images from old engineering journals as illustrations in a new book I am writing? These are mostly technical drawings and engravings dating from 1893. One such is journal is "Engineering" edited by Maw and Dredge, published monthly since 1865.

I was also wondering about similar content in old text books (published in the 1890s 1900s).

Thanks
Jason

[AndyJ]

Engravings from made from 1862 onwards were protected by something called the Fine Arts Copyright Act, which provided for a term of protection of the lifetime of the artist and seven years after his death. The 1911 Copyright Act extended this period to the lifetime plus 50 years and would have applied to any works which were still within the old term when the Act came into force in 1912, as well as any new works created after that time. This period of protection applied right up to 1995 when the post mortem part was extended to 70 years. On that basis any engraving etc from the nineteenth century will now almost certainly be out of copyright. However engravings from the 1900s onwards are more problematic. In most cases you probably won't be able to determine the identity of the artist, and so you can follow the general rule for anonymous works and apply the fixed term of 70 years from the date of publication (see section 12(3) of the CDPA). However where the artist is clearly identified, you need to try and ascertain his date of death and then add 50 years to that, and providing the combined period ended before I January 1995 (ie the artist died before 1 January 1945) you can take it that the illustration is out of copyright. Where the named artist died after the beginning of 1945 his work would be protected for 70 years after his death. Obviously the major issue there is trying find out when an individual artist died.

I hope that helps.

[Jason210]

Thanks. That certainly helps with the artistic engravings.

Do you know anything about ship plans and engineering drawings in the same publications? These would not be the works of individual artists but of a shipbuilders drawing office.

[AndyJ]

Artistic works in general, other than photographs, were all subject to the same rules as I explained for engravings.
Photographs were treated separately under the 1911 Copyright Act. They were subject to a fixed 50 year copyright term from the moment the photograph was taken, irrespective of whether the image was published or not. This applied to all photographs made before 1 January 1945, after which they became subject to the same rules as other artistic works, namely the lifetime of the artist/photographer plus 70 years from the end of the year in which he or she died.