Re: U.K. Copyright Duration

Life + 70 came in on 1 January 1995. It does apply retroactively: the provisions for dealing with extended and revived copyright are somewhat complicated. As far as a work in which copyright had expired is concerned, it gets revived protection if it was still protected under the copyright law of any EEA country on 1 July 1995.

Life plus 50 came in with the Copyright Act 1911, which was repealed by the 1956 Act. I do not know immediately whether existing works then got the new term of protection: I guess they would. So under the 1911 Act, and the 1956 Act, copyright was runing until 1996, meaning that on 1 July 1995 the work was still protected in the UK and it will benefit from the extension, not revival, of copyright.

This answer is only off the top of my head. Don't rely on it as legal advice. Should you wish i would gladly verify the position under the old statutes for you. Note that if one was seeking to exploit a work in this category, careful consideration would have to be given to the provisions about ownership of extended copyright and other detailed stuff in the legislation. I suggest if you want guidance on this, we correspond off this list for fear of boring everyone else.

Peter Groves
Davis & Co (Solicitors) Limited. Registered in England no. 2812664 The Gate House, Clifford's Inn Passage, LONDON EC4A 1DN, UK website http://davisco.net/
<petergroves[_at_]compuserve.com> Received on Mon Jan 25 1999 - 09:17:37 GMT