Crown Copyright

 

You're probably familiar with the United States Government's unique relationship with copyright, namely that it doesn't really have one, most works produced by or for the United States Government are public domain, though there are a few small exceptions.

In the UK, works created by or for the Government or the Royal Family which is part of the government, but also its own thing have a separate relationship to copyright that differs from the life+ model that covers most works of media. It's Crown copyright and unfortunately unlike the US it maintains a period of exclusivity and even worse is a nightmare to navigate as there are so many contradictory categories of protection and dates of duration to take into account.

What is Crown Copyright you ask? Well according to the UK government's copyright office:

 

Crown copyright is defined under section 163 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 as works made by officers or servants of the Crown in the course of their duties.

Crown copyright covers material created by civil servants (PDF, 0.52MB), ministers and government departments and agencies (PDF, 0.19MB). This includes legislation, government codes of practice, social media content (PDF, 0.1MB), government reports, official press releases, academic articles (PDF, 0.21MB) and many public records. For clarification of the duration of copyright please see the flowcharts for Crown copyright and non-Crown copyright. The National Archives has also produced a Permanent Secretary's Guide to Copyright (PDF, 0.88MB) and Generative AI and Crown copyright: a brief guide for government departments (PDF, 0.82MB).

Crown-owned copyright applies where Crown rights have been secured under contractual arrangements in works commissioned by the Crown (PDF, 0.1MB). Copyright can also come into Crown ownership by means of assignment or transfer of the copyright from the legal owner of the copyright to the Crown. Copyright in a work which has been assigned to the Crown lasts 70 years after the death of the person who created it.

The default licence for most Crown copyright and Crown database right information is the Open Government Licence.

Crown Copyright and the Soviet Union copyright situation are so convoluted that I've tried and failed to tackle both several times in the past. Thankfully I've had assistance, from Tim Padfield who created a flowchart to make it much easier to decipher Crown copyright.

 

 You might be wondering how they determined the different rates of duration and categories of work, or why 2039 is singled out as an important year, I have no idea. Honestly, I'm just thankful I now have an easy guide when determining if something is still in copyright or not.