Posthumous Works
If an unpublished work was published before the 1988 Act came into force, and the author had been dead for more than 50 years, the work remained in copyright for 50 years from the end of the year of publication.
If an unpublished work is published after the 1988 Act came into force, and the author had been dead for more than 50 years, its copyright will expire at the end of 2039. Later amendments have altered this to include only authors who died more than 70 years before the Act came into force.
Therefore an unpublished work by an author who died before 1918, published after commencement of the 1988 Act, will expire at the end of 2039. However, if a work by an author who died in, say, 1870 was published in 1970 (i.e. before the 1988 Act), its copyright would expire 50 years after 1970, i.e. in 2020.
Read more about this topic: Copyright Law Of The United Kingdom
Famous quotes containing the words posthumous and/or works:
“Fashion, though in a strange way, represents all manly virtue. It is virtue gone to seed: it is a kind of posthumous honor. It does not often caress the great, but the children of the great: it is a hall of the Past.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Reason, the prized reality, the Law, is apprehended, now and then, for a serene and profound moment, amidst the hubbub of cares and works which have no direct bearing on it;Mis then lost, for months or years, and again found, for an interval, to be lost again. If we compute it in time, we may, in fifty years, have half a dozen reasonable hours.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)