ciig.org.uk

CopyrightCIIG copyright statement

Copyright Notice: All text and images on this site, ciig.org.uk are copyright under the jurisdiction of England and Wales.

  • Header image from an original photograph © of San Francisco Museum, by kind permission of Karen Winton, IMC Media Limited, Hong Kong
  • All other images © Construction Industry Information Group and/or individual members, unless stated otherwise.
  • Site design © C A Gibson.

For information

Copyright in the UK is automatic on publication.

There is no current requirement for an assertion of copyright to be made in the UK for copyright to subsist. However, this is not the case in all jurisdictions. The Universal Copyright Convention (1952) (‘UCC’), to which more than 100 countries are signatories, requires that any country which under its domestic law requires certain copyright formalities to be performed to obtain protection, such formalities are deemed satisfied, even with regard to non-nationals and works published outside the territory, if at the time of first publication the copyright symbol © together with the proprietor and date of first publication was placed on the work, so as to give reasonable notice of copyright protection.

The UCC was concluded in 1952 under the auspices of the United Nations Education, Science and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in an attempt to incorporate a greater number of countries into the international copyright community. UCC protection is lower and more flexible than the Berne Convention.

The Berne Convention was concluded in 1886. It aims to protect the rights of authors by providing certain established standards of protection for their works. Two major international principles underlying the Berne Convention are:

  • the principle of national treatment;
  • the principle of automatic protection.