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Use of Copyright Material

Middleton Railway Trust Ltd. (MRT) Policy Directive

Reference: GEN/4 (9/21)

Subject: Use of Copyright Material.

For the attention of: All Council members.

This Directive does not form part of the Safety Management System.

Revision History

This is the first version of this directive.

Content Summary

This Directive contains the following sections: Introduction

Background

Requirements for the Licensing Scheme Operation of the Licensing Scheme

Introduction

  1. This Policy Directive specifies the arrangements that the MRT needs to make in respect of the use of Intellectual Property (IP from now on).
  • In accordance with the procedures in Policy Directive GEN/1, this Directive must be reviewed at least once every five years. This Directive and the policy defined in it are therefore next due for review in September 2026, unless circumstances should arise that make it appropriate to review it earlier than that.

Background

  • The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA from now on) defines various types of IP and the associated rights to use these types of IP: particularly copyright, design right and database right. Since the MRT needs to use types of IP to which these rights are applicable, it needs to have procedures in place to regulate these uses, and this directive defines these procedures.
  • A key provision of the CDPA is that these rights automatically belong to the creator of the IP. For employed staff their contract of employment may specify that these rights in any IP that they produce in the course of their employment must be assigned to the employer, but this approach is not appropriate for the MRT in respect of IP produced by its volunteers.
  • The CDPA allows the owner of any of these IP rights to license the use of the associated IP to others, and such licences can be very informal. Historically, this has been the case with IP that has been created by the MRT’s volunteers, with the intention that the MRT should then use the IP. Potentially, though, the very informal nature of such licences can create problems, and the MRT wishes to avoid these in future. The MRT will therefore introduce a more formal scheme for the licensing to it of the right to use IP that has been created by its volunteers.
  • There are in existence various publicly available licensing schemes, such as the range of creative commons licenses. The MRT has investigated these, and after consultation with volunteers who have created significant items of IP it has found that they are not appropriate for its requirements.
  • The MRT has therefore determined that it needs to create its own licensing scheme for the use of IP.

Requirements for the Licensing Scheme

  • To identify the requirements for this IP licensing scheme, the MRT has consulted widely with those of its volunteers who have created IP with the intention that this should then be used by the MRT. This consultation has identified a set of requirements for such a licensing scheme, and the MRT should as far as possible ensure that the scheme which it creates meets all of these requirements.
  • The requirements for a licensing scheme that were identified through this consultation are as follows.
    • The scheme will need to include the maintenance of a register of the licences that creators of IP have issued to the MRT for the use of items of IP that they have created.
    • The scheme should be able to cover the licensing of all of the IP which a creator would be likely to want to allow the MRT to use, including items of IP that will be created in the future as well as ones that have already been created.
    • The scheme must be capable of applying retrospectively to items of IP which the MRT has already been allowed to use previously.
    • The scheme should be simple to operate, and in particular it should be simple to add an item of IP to the register of licences.
    • The accidental failure to include some item of IP in this register should not invalidate the retrospective application of the scheme to that item, and should make it simple to bring that item within the scheme.
    • The scheme should cover all of the various rights that may apply to an item of IP, and should allow for the different kinds of use that may be made of the IP (eg copying, publishing, adapting, etc), but without needing to go into too much detail of the intended uses.
    • The scheme should not involve fees being payable by either party to the other, even though this would mean that licence agreements made under the scheme would not be enforceable as contracts by either party, since there would be no consideration specified.
    • The scheme should require the MRT, when using or publishing an item of IP, to acknowledge wherever practical the creator as the owner of the copyright in that item of IP.
    • The scheme should normally allow the MRT to adapt copyright material where appropriate, for instance where images need to be cropped or resized for publication, provided that such adaptation would not damage or detract from the material.
    • The scheme should allow for more significant adaptation, but it should ensure that the copyright in the adapted version would always remain with the creator.
    • For items that are subject to design right or database right, the scheme should cover the use of these items in making articles or other artefacts, as well as the aspects of copyright that are associated with such items.
    • For items that are subject to design right or database right, the scheme should specify that the liability for any defects that are introduced by adapting the items is the responsibility of the person producing the adapted item, and not the original creator of the item.
    • The scheme should ensure that licences for the use of items of IP are irrevocable, so that once an item of IP has been licensed to the MRT for use the permission to use it can not be withdrawn, and nor can the terms of that permission be altered by either party.
    • The scheme should allow for the creator of an item of IP subsequently to license or assign the copyright in that item to some third party, as long as they ensure that the license of it to the MRT continues to apply. In particular, since death does not extinguish copyright, the scheme should include specifically the possibility of assignment of the IP on the decease of the creator.
    • The scheme should allow the creator of some item of IP to permit the MRT to license some third party to use that item for any purpose that the MRT considers would be beneficial to it. Such third party use should be subject to the requirements above, but (unlike the creative commons licences) it should not normally include any permission for the third party to further licence any use of the copyright material by other parties.
    • The scheme should also allow non-standard licences to be created, for licensing the use by a third party of some item of IP, where such licences would be specific to the particular situation.
    • For videos and photographs the scheme should also ensure that permissions of those appearing in them, or assisting in producing them, were being properly handled.

Operation of the Licensing Scheme

  1. To implement this licensing scheme, a standard licence agreement will be drafted, together with a template for the register entries. The Company Secretary will manage the process of signing and recording copies of this licence agreement.
  1. The licensing scheme will be operated on behalf of the MRT by the Company Secretary, who will maintain the register of the creators of IP who have given licences to the MRT to use the items of IP that they have created. For each creator the register will record the identities of the items of IP and the uses for which they have been licensed.
  1. This licensing scheme will come into operation on 1st November 2021, and once the scheme is in operation the MRT should not make any use of IP created by any of its volunteers, or other contributors, unless:
    1. the creator of the IP and the MRT have agreed the terms on which the IP should be used;
    1. a version of the standard agreement for the use of IP that would cover this use of the IP has been concluded between the creator of the IP and the MRT; and
    1. this use of this IP has been added to the MRT’s register of licences for the use of IP.
  1. Any members of the MRT Council whose role involves them in any way in managing the creation by volunteers of IP, or the production or publication of material that uses in any way IP that is created by volunteers, must ensure that they pass the details of this IP and the use that is being made of it to the Company Secretary, so that this can be incorporated into the register and where necessary the appropriate license agreements for its use can be concluded.

Drafted by A J Cowling (Company Secretary), following consultations with the creators of IP including Mrs S Bye, G Johnson, C W Milner, D R Stead and R J Taggart, and approved on 16th September 2021.