[Wikipedia-l] HMSO Crown copyright FOIA Request

[David Newton]

David Gerard (fun at thingy.apana.org.au) wrote:

>Are Ordnance Survey maps from 1854 or before Crown Copyright? Because if
>they are now public domain, Open Streetmap (http://openstreetmap.org/)
>would probably love to know.

There are two possible answers to that question.

1) If the maps are published then they have been public domain since
1912 when the Copyright Act 1911 came in, and possibly since 1904 when
50 years since publication expired (although Crown copyright did not
exist in its present form back then).
2) If the maps are unpublished then they are still in copyright and
will remain so until the start of 2040 when the transitional
provisions of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 come to an
end.