Talk:British Rail Double Arrow

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Copyright status[edit]

I'm starting the discussion here as there are various versions of the logo across Wikimedia, including notably the base version, File:British Rail - colour reversed logo.svg. They all seem to be tagged as though they were originally Crown copyright and are now public domain by effluxion of time (50 years). However, this is based on a misunderstanding as to the original ownership.

The logo was created in 1965, when the legal entity behind British Rail was the British Railways Board. Although this was a "nationalised" railway, the Board was not part of the government: by section 30 of the Transport Act 1962, it was provided that "neither any of the Boards [ie BRB] ... are to be regarded as the servant or agent of the Crown, or as enjoying any status, immunity or privilege of the Crown". At the time, by section 39 of the Copyright Act 1956, Crown copyright applied to works "made by or under the direction or control of Her Majesty or a Government department", which BRB was not (the redefinition of Crown copyright in section 163 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 brought it even more tightly, though it is by that point irrelevant).

By way of a slight aside, it would seem that the copyright which originally vested in BRB in 1965 will almost certainly have been transferred, post-privatisation, by statutory scheme to the Department for Transport following the almost-abolition of BRB and BRB (R), but this just means the Crown owns that copyright, not that it becomes Crown copyright, because it was never "made by Her Majesty or by an officer or servant of the Crown in the course of his duties".

Following the National Archives non-Crown copyright flowchart, if you take the view that the author is known, the copyright will run for 70 years from their death, and if not, then 70 years from first publication - so either way it is firmly still within copyright.

I wanted to leave this here for a little while to see if anyone has any views, as this is complicated stuff - otherwise we will have to look to remedy the situation with the files on Wikimedia. ninety:one 20:47, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]