Special Collections and copyright law
Introducing copyright law
Copyright law in the UK is a property right, based on the right of a creator to benefit financially from what they create by forbidding the creation of copies without their permission. The copyright holder may be that creator or their Estate or a company. Copyright lasts for varying periods of time, known as "duration", after which material is out of copyright. The law does however allow users to make copies for various purposes without permission. For example, the "library and archive exception" allows cultural institutions such as Special Collections to make limited numbers of copies for researchers and students under certain circumstances.
Complexities of copyright law
When we discuss copyright law, we are dealing with the outcomes of centuries of legislation, in which new Acts have added layers of complications rather than simply replacing previous arrangements. Copyright is often therefore ambiguous, to the extent that sometimes it is not even possible to be clear as to whether an item is in copyright, let alone who might hold the rights. The picture is further complicated by new technologies unforeseen by creators of legislation and the resulting changes in user expectations.
Owning a physical object does not necessarily equal ownership of intellectual property rights in it. In some cases the donor of material may be the copyright holder e.g. if an author donates their manuscripts. Often however such material is third-party copyright i.e. the rights are held neither by the University or the donor of the material. For instance, letters written to the archive donor will be the copyright of those letter-writers. Some donors and third parties have licensed Special Collections to provide copies and permit publication under certain conditions.
In many cases copyright holders are unknown and untraceable. This does not mean these works are not in copyright however. Such works are known as orphan works.
Copyright law and printed books
Printed books are in copyright until 70 years from the end of the calendar year in which the last remaining author of the work dies. This means that many of our books are out of copyright. Other collections such as Priestley and Hawkes are mostly 20th/21st century and are in copyright. Watch out for extensive annotation in older books, which may count as unpublished material and hence be in copyright.
Copyright law and archives
Most materials in our archives are in copyright. Perpetual copyright in "literary" i.e. text-based unpublished materials was ended by the 1988 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act and such materials come out of copyright 50 years after the Act i.e. 2039. However the library/archive exception mentioned above allows for copying of such materials for personal research unless forbidden by the copyright holder.
Copyright in artistic, photographic and audio-visual media is particularly complicated, involving multiple rights holders and different holders depending on the date of creation. However this material is not covered by the "literary" legislation mentioned above and therefore older material of this kind may be out of copyright. For example, anonymous photographs over 70 years old are out of copyright.
Our catalogues wherever possible outline the copyright situation as we understand it, but many of our archives contain thousands of third-party copyright items, each of which may require extensive research to locate a rights holder. We cannot therefore guarantee that we have any information about copyright situation or rights holders for any given item.
Further assistance
Special Collections staff are happy to share what we know about copyright and to offer guidance to Special Collections users.
However, please note that this is not legal advice, that we don't have time to do detailed copyright research for you, and that any infringement of copyright is your own responsibility.