Copyright in Army & Navy Store Catalogue

[ffutures]

I have a 1939-40 Army and Navy store catalogue. It's now 70+ years old - anyone know the legal situation on scanning some of it? It's a mixture of text and graphics, the pictures look to be engraved plates made either from photos or from drawings. So far I haven't found any artist or photographer credits.

Comments

[brett-dunbar.livejournal.com]

Under UK law copyright on anonymous and pseudonymous works where the actual author is unknown last for 70 years, if the creator can be determined then it is the standard life + 70 years, so most are probably still copyright. As the company still exists (according to wikipedia it was bought by House of Fraser in 1976) contacting it to ask for permission would seem to be a good idea.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

The answer to this is not simple to get to!

At the time the photographs were taken the governing law would have been the Copyright Act 1911. This gave photographs a fixed 50-year term of protection from the date the photograph was taken.

In 1956 a new Act (the Copyright Act 1956) amended the law so that photographs has a 50-year team of protection from the date they were first published. However, it has a transitional provision by which photographs in existence on 1 June 1957 were protected under the 1911 rules, i.e. the term ran from when they were taken, not published.

If this was still the law then the answer to your question would be easy: the pictures cannot have been taken later than 1939, so would have fallen out of copyright protection by the beginning of 1990.

But this isn't the law now, because the 1956 Act was replaced by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and things got really fun.

CDPA 1988 applied the 'life plus X' model from literary works to photographs for the first time. X was originally 50 years, but was later increased to 70. Originally this only applied to photographs taken after CPDA 1988 came into force, but a later amendment removed this exemption, so the rule is now life+70. This therefore raises the question of what this means for the pictures in question, and how the possibility of revived copyright is dealt with.

It's almost certain that the A&N was first owner of the copyright in the photos, in that they were very likely taken either by an employee, or a photographer under contract. But the author will still have been the photographer.

The provisions of CDPA 1988 are complex but my understanding - based on looking at the Act, related legislation and a respected practitioner text on copyright - is that if the pictures are anonymous then at latest they get 70 years protection after publictation (i.e. to end 2009) and more likely 50 years.

If the author is ever identified then they are now back in copyright until 70 years after death. But, as this would be a revived copyright, there are special and somewhat complex arrangments.

The law on engravings may be a bit different and I'll have to check when I have time.

I think the best course of action would be to enquire to the current owners of A&N (House of Fraser, as noted) and say that you understand that pictures in the 70+ year old catalogue are now out of copyright but just checking that there is no objection to reproducing them.