[OSM-talk] GPX tracing out of copyright maps

Nick Hill nick at nickhill.co.uk
Mon Nov 13 17:20:25 GMT 2006


The 1988 act can be viewed at:
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1988/Ukpga_19880048_en_2.htm

Interestingly, section 11.2 says:
Where a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work is made by an employee in 
the course of his employment, his employer is the first owner of any copyright 
in the work subject to any agreement to the contrary.

Given the map was published by George Philip & Sons Ltd, it would be fair to 
assume that company was first owner of copyright.

This raises some questions:
Is first owner of copyright presumed to be exclusive ownership of copyright for 
the cases of work passing out of copyright?

Given that a company is immortal, are there alternative provisions for the term 
of copyright for items where the copyright is owned by the company? (If there 
were no alternative provisions, copyrights owned by companies may as well never 
expire.)

If copyright for the first owner of a piece of work comes to an end, does 
copyright persist with joint authors?


Nick Burch wrote:
> On Sat, 11 Nov 2006, Nick Hill wrote:
>> However, on page 
>> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Out-of-copyright_maps
>> It says for company produced maps (such as this) copyright persists 70 
>> years after the end of the calendar year it was produced.
> 
> Having just heard back from a friend who's a lawyer, I'm told that this 
> is incorrect. For the UK:
> 
> "Yup, section 12(8)(a)(i) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
> states that for literary, dramatic, musical or artistic works having
> multiple authors, the term of protection is 70 years from the end of
> the calendar year in which the last surviving author passes away.
> There are no alterations of the term."
> 
> In the US, work done for hire (often work done for a company where the 
> company gets the copyright), there's a different term (95 years) to that 
> for work done for and by the creator (life+70).
> 
> 
> I've updated the wiki page with this new information.
> 
> Nick
> 




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