Book People Archive

Re: UK copyright laws

The copyright law in the United Kingdom is "Life plus seventy".

The United Kingdom is part of the European Union, and follows its laws.
Basically (as confirmed by the website JMO has given the url for) an
author's works are in copyright until the end of the seventieth year
following the author's death. If there are more than one author, working in
close collaboration so that you cannot distinguish who wrote which section
of a book, then the date of the last author to die is used, but if you can
determine who wrote which section, as in a collection of essays, or of
learned articles, then you can consider the sections separately, so they
will not all come out of copyright simultaneously.

So Judy Elliott's examples giving publication dates do not have enough
information to decide on whether the works are in copyright: we need the
dates of death of the author or authors.

Many laws governing the European Union have been initiated by the French,
but they often vary the laws to suit their own ideas. In this case they add
a number of years as follows. If the person died during one of the World
Wars, then as a reward for possible heroism they get an extra five years.
Furthermore they say that these wars did not end when everybody else thinks
they did, but a few years later. Thus the works of a French person dying in
1947 may not be out of copyright until the end of 2022.

In the United Kingdom the works of anyone who died during or before 1935 are
now out of copyright.

You can find details of which books of importance are out of copyright by
looking at
http://www.kingkong.demon.co.uk/ngcoba/ngcoba.htm

Here you will find that if the date of death cannot be supported, for
instance by a Death Certificate, you can make certain suppositions, for
instance if the book has been published over 150 years ago it is reasonable,
but no more than that, to presume that it is out of copyright,