Copyright is the legal protection given to creators of certain kinds of original works.  It gives them the exclusive right to make copies of their work and issue them to the public. Anyone who infringes that right by copying a protected work without the permission of the copyright owner can be sued for damages.  Copyright is a form of property which can be sold (‘assigned’) or leased (‘licensed’) in the same way as other forms of property.  It comes into existence automatically as soon as a work is created without any need for registration.  If the work was made in the course of employment, copyright is owned by the employer unless a contract specifies otherwise.

In the UK the legal framework, including what is protected and for how long, is laid out in the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and subsequent Statutory Instruments.

What is protected?

• Literary, dramatic & musical works, which include computer programs, web pages and designs for databases
• Artistic works, which includes photographs, maps and charts
• Sound recordings, films, broadcasts or cable programmes
• Typographical arrangements of published editions: the way the words are arranged on the pages of a literary, dramatic or musical work.

How long does copyright last?

The length of time during which a work is protected depends on its type.

• Literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works are protected for 70 years after the death of the creator.
• Films are protected for 70 years after death of the last to die of the director, the author of the screenplay/dialogue or the composer of the music created for and used in the film.
• Sound recordings, broadcasts and cable programmes are protected for 50 years after the year in which they were made, or first released or broadcast.
• Typographical arrangements are protected for 25 years after the end of the year in which the edition was published.

When can copyright material be copied?

With the permission of the copyright holder you can copy whatever is agreed and make as many copies as agreed.  You can copy without permission in certain circumstances under the exceptions to the copyright holder's exclusive rights contained in the 1988 Act.  The most important of these for academic institutions is ‘fair dealing’, which allows individuals, with a sufficient acknowledgement, to make single copies from material published in the UK for the following purposes:

• Research for a non-commercial purpose or private study
• Criticism or review – for example you may quote a passage from a book that is in copyright if you are writing a review of it
• Reporting current events – this not does include photographs.

Guidelines for 'electronic fair dealing' for the higher education community have been agreed between the Publishers’ Association and the Joint Information Systems Committee.

Under another exception in the 1988 Act you may produce a single accessible copy of copyright material for a visually impaired person if the work is not already available in a suitable format.