Copyright Law of The United Kingdom - Historical Background

Historical Background

Under the Copyright Act 1842 the copyright period lasted for the lifetime of the author plus 7 years, or for 42 years from first publication if that was longer.

The Copyright Act 1911 provided a longer copyright period, namely the life of the author plus 50 years, for works that were first published after 1 July 1912; thus the date of first publication became irrelevant, provided it was after July 1912. This was retained as the period of copyright under the Copyright Act of 1956 and under the 1988 Act.

In 1995 the period of copyright was extended to the life of the author plus 70 years (as described above) for works which were, at that time, still within copyright anywhere within the European Economic Area. One effect of this was to impose a copyright extension of twenty years on all works that were made or published after 1911 by any person who had died after 1945, as the previous copyright period (of lifetime plus 50 years) had not yet expired in the UK for someone who had died in 1945 or later.

Prior to the 1956 Act the copyright laws took no account of the author's nationality, only of the country in which publication first occurred. Accordingly, a literary work published before 1 June 1956 had no copyright in the UK unless its first publication was in the UK. This was subject to the rule that first publication could be simultaneous in more than one country; and thus copyright protection in the UK was obtained if publication occurred in the UK within one month of first publication abroad.

Nevertheless, literary works by British authors which first saw publication outside the UK prior to 1 June 1956 might have no copyright protection at all in the UK. Some recognition of foreign copyright existed, but varied depending on which country publication had first occurred in. In general, UK law recognised the copyright laws of foreign countries (i.e. non-Commonwealth countries) only if the other country was a party to the international Berne Copyright Conventions, and to some extent this is still the case today.