Hi there.
We are producing a piece of artwork to go on some council hoardings around a new development and want to feature some historic posters from the area, such as on the links below.
https://greyhoundracingtimes.co.uk/2019 ... lthamstow/
https://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/ ... w-stadium/
http://breweryhistory.com/wiki/index.ph ... d_1898.jpg
The businesses they were advertising are now long defunct so does this make them fine to use (we plan to recreate the images anyway as they are not hi-res enough for this use).
TIA for your help.
Use of old posters
Re: Use of old posters
Hi morty,
The posters in your links are a mixture of text and illustrations.The text would be classed as a literary work for copyright purposes, but since it is mostly factual in nature, it's doubtful that much of it would qualify for copyright in the first place, lacking as it does much creativity on the part of the writer. The images are a mixture of photographs and artwork, and the overall design of some of the posters is sufficiently artistic to also qualify for copyright.
The law today says that copyright lasts for the lifetime of the author or artist plus 70 years from the end of the year in which he/she died. Therefore anything produced within the last 100 - 120 years is likely to still be in copyright. The copyright most probably belonged to the companies which commissioned the work on the posters. Only the owner of the copyright can enforce those rights.
Thus we have a situation where theoretically copyright exists, but in practice there is very little likelihood that there is anyone around today who would be interested in enforcing it. The best legal solution to this would be to get orphan works licences for anything you want to use (see here for how to do this), and you would then be indemnified against a claim should an owner come forward at a later stage. However that could cost* up to a hundred pounds or so and maybe outside the budget for this kind of project. The alternative would be to do your very best to track down the current owners of the copyright and ask for permission to use the posters. Even businesses which have been wound up will have had assets such as the land they were on, goodwill, trade marks etc which will probably have been bought by someone, and so this is also where the copyright may have ended up. Since this project seems to be in partnership with the local council, maybe you can use some of their records to track down what happened to the assets of the companies when they ceased trading.
* The cost is split between the admin fee (for instance one application covering 20 individual works would cost £40) and then there is the licence fee based on the current market rate for such works, which in this case I would think was fairly low. It would be well worthwhile speaking to the stafff at the IPO for an estimate and general guidance before completely dismissing this option.
The posters in your links are a mixture of text and illustrations.The text would be classed as a literary work for copyright purposes, but since it is mostly factual in nature, it's doubtful that much of it would qualify for copyright in the first place, lacking as it does much creativity on the part of the writer. The images are a mixture of photographs and artwork, and the overall design of some of the posters is sufficiently artistic to also qualify for copyright.
The law today says that copyright lasts for the lifetime of the author or artist plus 70 years from the end of the year in which he/she died. Therefore anything produced within the last 100 - 120 years is likely to still be in copyright. The copyright most probably belonged to the companies which commissioned the work on the posters. Only the owner of the copyright can enforce those rights.
Thus we have a situation where theoretically copyright exists, but in practice there is very little likelihood that there is anyone around today who would be interested in enforcing it. The best legal solution to this would be to get orphan works licences for anything you want to use (see here for how to do this), and you would then be indemnified against a claim should an owner come forward at a later stage. However that could cost* up to a hundred pounds or so and maybe outside the budget for this kind of project. The alternative would be to do your very best to track down the current owners of the copyright and ask for permission to use the posters. Even businesses which have been wound up will have had assets such as the land they were on, goodwill, trade marks etc which will probably have been bought by someone, and so this is also where the copyright may have ended up. Since this project seems to be in partnership with the local council, maybe you can use some of their records to track down what happened to the assets of the companies when they ceased trading.
* The cost is split between the admin fee (for instance one application covering 20 individual works would cost £40) and then there is the licence fee based on the current market rate for such works, which in this case I would think was fairly low. It would be well worthwhile speaking to the stafff at the IPO for an estimate and general guidance before completely dismissing this option.
Advice or comment provided here is not and does not purport to be legal advice as defined by s.12 of Legal Services Act 2007
Re: Use of old posters
This is fantastic. Thanks for such a considered and detailed response. That is really helpful.