Crown copyright

Crown copyright is a form of copyright claim used by the governments of a number of Commonwealth realms. It provides special copyright rules for the Crown, i.e. government departments and (generally) state entities.

Under Part VII of the Copyright Act 1968, the Australian Government holds copyright in any work, film or sound recording made by or under the direction or control of the Government, and any work first published by or under the direction or control of the Government.

Section 182A of the Act provides that for certain "prescribed works", copyright is not infringed for making one copy of the whole or of a part of that work, as long as it is not sold for a rate that is above the actual costs of copying. Prescribed works generally include legislation and court judgments.

An extensive review was carried out in 2004 and the findings were published in 2005 in the Copyright Law Review Committee's report. The chief recommendation was to end the distinction between the Crown and other copyright holders. In particular, the Committee was "emphatic" that the Crown lose its unique position of gaining copyright over material whenever it is the first publisher of such material. For example, a previously unpublished short story, upon being published in a government work, would cease to belong to the author and would instead become Crown copyright, denying the author any future royalties or rights to it.

Crown copyright has been used to deny public access to data about the Black Saturday bushfires.

Normally, copyright in Canada "exists for the life of the author/creator, the remainder of the calendar year in which he is deceased, plus fifty years after the end of that calendar year". For Crown copyright however, there is a slight difference. Canadian Crown copyright is based on the concept of royal prerogative and "is not subject to the usual statutory copyright term". This prerogative is referenced at the outset of section 12 of the Copyright Act, which states that this section is made "Without prejudice to any rights or privileges of the Crown". Crown copyright covers all works that are “prepared or published by or under the direction or control of Her Majesty or any government department.” In this way, "work produced by government departments, whether published or unpublished, may be protected either permanently or at the whim of the Crown". Subsequently, Crown copyright can be, in certain cases, "said to be perpetual...and not to lapse through non-use or non-assertion", and that a "right to certain works by prerogative amounts to a perpetual term of copyright protection". One example is where the "Arms of Canada as designed in 1921 and revised in 1957...[and] as revised in 1994...are protected under the Trade-marks Act and the Copyright Act", maintaining Crown copyright long after the normal 50-year period. Crown copyright exists for a variety of reasons, such as to ensure accuracy and integrity, to control symbols used to identify the Crown and its agents, as well as to supervise and control the publication of government works as the public's trustee.

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