Copyright Guidelines

The purpose of these copyright guidelines is to help lenders, exhibitions organisers and venues manage copyright effectively. Exhibitions invariably require some level of reproduction, even if there is no digital component to displays themselves. Reproduction will be necessary for marketing, producing publications, carrying out educational activities, digital installations, online experiences – and the list goes on.

Embedding copyright management into the initiation, planning, execution and wind-down of an exhibition is crucial to successfully navigating the legal, financial, and reputational risks of reproduction and reuse of copyrighted works.

The following sections provide the basics of copyright legislation in the UK, some of the responsibilities around copyright borne by exhibitions teams, some of the considerations and steps to carry out regarding rights clearance, and information on licensing. The Annex includes example agreements covering a range of scenarios between lenders, rights holders, exhibition organisers, and venues.

The advice contained in this document should not be regarded as “legal advice”, but as best practice based on UK copyright law. Always seek specialist advice in given situations that require it.

In the UK copyright is governed by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (‘CDPA 1988’), which came into effect on 1st August 1989. It has since been revised multiple times, most notably in 2014 after two major Government consultations, the Gowers and Hargreaves reviews, which brought in several exceptions to copyright under fair dealing among other changes. The Act has also been amended in line with various EC Directives over the years. Brexit had an impact on some reciprocal arrangements with the EU including the removal of the EU Orphan Works Exception from the CDPA.

Previous law may still be relevant for some works. For example, the commissioner is usually the owner of copyright in commissioned photographs taken before 1st August 1989. Specialist advice should be sought in cases of doubt.

Copyright prevents the following original works from being reproduced, issued, performed, communicated to the public or adapted without the consent of the copyright owner:

• Original literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works (in the case of dramatic and musical works this includes the printed reproduction of lyrics etc. as well as their performance);
• Sound recordings, films and broadcasts;
• Typographical arrangements of published editions.

Copyright is usually first owned by the creator even where the work is commissioned by someone else. The exception is work created in the course of employment, where the employer will own the copyright.

If a work is created by a volunteer, freelance, intern or other person not having ‘employee’ status, and there is no written agreement to the contrary, copyright of the work will automatically belong to the volunteer, freelance, intern or non-employee. It is therefore essential to address copyright and other forms of IP in such contracts.

An essential point to note is that ownership of copyright is distinct from ownership or possession of the objects themselves. A gallery or a museum, therefore, will not necessarily own the copyright of the objects in their collections or on display.

The copyright owner may transfer or assign copyright to someone else, in writing.

Read the CDPA Chapter 1 for more information about what is covered and duration of copyright.

In the UK and many other countries, copyright normally lasts for 70 years after the end of the year in which the creator dies (life+70). This is the case for the majority of literary, dramatic, musical, artistic and photographic works, as well as most cinema film recordings that have been published or made available to the public with the copyright holders’ consent.

There are exceptions to this rule. Older cinema film recordings, sound recordings, broadcast and Cable TV programmes, anonymous works, works of corporate authorship with no named individual, unpublished literary works, works created by the Crown and its employees, to name some, may have different durations, and fall under clauses in older versions of the CDPA.

In general, for many common types of work, copyright duration is unlikely to extend beyond life+70, but there are exceptions. For example, some unpublished works created before 1988 are officially in copyright until December 31, 2039 under transitional provisions. This is known as the “2039 rule” and means that even medieval manuscripts are considered in copyright under the law. In practice, a reasonable approach is to apply the life+70 benchmark to such material, while considering the risks vs benefits of treating older unpublished materials as if they were in the public domain.

Copyright exceptions, as they are generally referred to, relate to certain “permitted acts” of reproduction that allow limited use of copyright works without permission of the copyright owner. Many of these statutory exceptions cannot be overridden by contract, although contractual restrictions may still affect access to works.

Some of the exceptions fall under “fair dealing,” where the use of extracts of copyright works can be considered fair. Specifically, reproductions should not commercially compete with the copyright owner’s work, and you should use no more than necessary to demonstrate your point. Many fair dealing exceptions require sufficient acknowledgement unless it is impossible or impractical to do so.

The table below summarises the key exceptions. For more detail on the rules relating to each exception, refer to the CDPA Chapter III.

Moral rights were introduced into UK law by the CDPA 1988 and exist independently of copyright. They are retained by the creator (or his/her heirs) and cannot be assigned or transferred (although they can be waived). These statutory rights can depend on assertion, waiver, exceptions and the intended use of the work, and can be supplemented or varied by contract wording. For example, a photographer may be required to ‘waive his or her moral rights’.

For more information refer to the CDPA Chapter IV.

Orphan works are works that are in copyright, but the rights holders are unknown or cannot be traced through a reasonable search.  Orphan works are included under the licensing chapter of the CDPA, section 116A-D. The orphan works  licensing scheme came into effect in 2015 and allows organisations, individuals and companies to obtain a government-backed, time-limited licence to copy orphan works for commercial and non-commercial purposes, for a fee. Applicants are required to carry out a “diligent search” and provide evidence of this, before a licence can be granted. The works are then recorded in an orphan works register hosted and managed by the UK government.

Between 2014 and 2020, the CDPA included section 76A “Certain permitted uses of orphan works” to implement the EU Orphan Works Directive of 2012 which permitted publicly accessible museums, libraries and archives to copy orphan works under certain conditions.  When the EU exit regulations came into force after Brexit, this clause was removed. There is no longer a standalone orphan works exception in UK law, although other exceptions may apply.

The Orphan Works Licence provided by the UK government indemnifies the use of such works for successful applicants. There is an application fee payable per work at the point of applying for a licence, and successfully authorised applicants must pay a licence fee which is held on behalf of the absent rights holders.

The licence granted:

• applies only for use in the UK
• can be for commercial or non-commercial use
• is non-exclusive (not restricted to a single licensee)
• can last up to 7 years
• will be able to be renewed

Applicants will need to carry out the following steps to apply for a licence:

1. Undertake a diligent search to identify and trace the rights holders (see more about searching for rights holders in Section 4 of this document),
2. Submit a report of the diligent search as evidence (sources checked and process followed), or
3. Provide information about the work (title, description, publication date, provenance) as available,
4. Provide information about known rights holders and any permission you have already received,
5. Upload an image of the work, and an image of the intended adaptation of the work
6. Pay the application fee – this is based on the number of works starting with £20 for the first work, £24 for 2 works, and adding a further £2 for each additional work,
7. Pay the licence fee if the application is authorised – this will vary depending on the type of work and the intended usage, and will be visible during the application process.

Orphan works are a fact of life for museums, libraries and archives, and careful consideration must be taken when reproducing such works outside the existing copyright exceptions or the orphan works licensing scheme.

Assigning orphan work status to a work and then reproducing and re-using it requires an analysis of the risks and a well-organised process to satisfy (at least internally) the level of due diligence required for a search. Documentation and maintaining an audit trail of the diligent search and communications is crucial to providing evidence should it be required, that sufficient effort was taken to trace rights holders.

Generally, risks will increase the more recent a work is, the higher the profile of the creator, the more commercially orientated it was when it was created, and the more widely and prominently the reproduction will be used.

In addition to carrying out diligent searches and taking steps to contact rights holders, organisations must have a “Take-down policy” or similar process that sets out their approach to handling requests or complaints from rights holders. Being able to demonstrate careful consideration in this way may help reduce the risk of a claim from a previously unknown copyright holder.

See the Rights Clearance section 4, below, for more detailed information on the workflow.

The use of Generative AI (GenAI) is becoming ubiquitous in personal, creative and work environments. GenAI refers to chatbots and other tools the generate content in response to prompts such as text, images, audio and video. These tools are generally built on Large Language Models (LLMs), but can also be built on smaller models for more domain-specific uses. Prompts can be added directly by humans or indirectly using AI Agents.

Public chatbots such as Google’s Gemini, OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Claude continuously optimise their outputs using prompts and media uploads as training data. That means not only are they learning user behaviours and expanding their contextual understanding of the real world, but they may also retain the information provided to them for ongoing training. This can vary depending on user settings for different tools and different subscription types. For this reason, it is important to consider carefully what information and content is shared with a public chatbot. It is possible that uploading an image or the text of a book, for example, could entail breach of copyright as that content may then be reused in ways that are not covered under licence.

Additionally, making works publicly available online exposes them to web crawlers, which search the web and harvest text and media for search indexing and other purposes, including AI systems. When making works open access online, it is important to consider such programmatic access in your risk assessments and licensing terms.

In terms of the copyright status of works created by GenAI, this is a tricky situation that jurisdictions around the world are grappling with. Who owns the rights to a work that a human didn’t create?  Normally, an originality test is applied to determine whether a work benefits from copyright at all, but this is breaking down when it comes to “computer-generated works” as they are referred to in the CDPA. In UK law, where significant human input has contributed to the creation of a computer-generated work, normal copyright protections would generally apply.  Where this is not the case, a separate provision assigns the rights to whoever made the “necessary arrangements” to create the works (limited to a period of 50 years).  How this applies is under review and may change.

Protection varies in other jurisdictions. For example, in both the US and the EU, wholly computer-generated works generally do not receive copyright protection.

Although EU copyright law has been harmonised to an extent, there are still differences between the jurisdictions. Each country’s legislation should be considered during cross-border dealings with the EU.

United States copyright law can be a challenging area, especially regarding the differences between US ‘fair use’ and UK ‘fair dealing’ and also ‘model release’, ‘property release’ and ‘personality rights’ issues. Jurisdiction of contracts should always be an essential clause within the contract.

For touring exhibitions and international loans, the jurisdiction under which a contract is made is important can have repercussions in terms of copyright compliance obligations. Consult a lawyer in case of difficulty.

Owners, lenders, curators, organisers and venues – all have a duty of care to the works they manage and display, and to consider the legal and ethical considerations of using and displaying those works. This section sets out some of the key responsibilities’ organisations have to bear in mind when it comes to creating, managing, and sharing reproductions.

The originating organisation/owners lending out works should:

• Provide information about the copyrights in the works to be on loan, including any existing reproductions of these works that will be supplied as part of the loan agreement,
• If the lender is not the owner of the works, ensure they are not restricted by the owner from authorising reproductions,
• If there are restrictions, agree with the exhibition organiser the method of seeking consent,
• Agree with the exhibition organiser the terms and conditions of reproductions for each of the works and any reproductions supplied as part of the loan,
• Specify the wording for credits and acknowledgements to accompany the reproductions,
• Where new reproductions are required, provide clarity around who owns the rights to these reproductions and their terms and conditions of use, within the loan agreement or a separate copyright contract,
• For physical reproductions (such as photographic prints) label with the copyright holder’s name, and year created,

Where practical, for example with newly created digital images, embed relevant metadata about the work and the image into the image format, including rights information.

The organisation requesting the loan should:

• Assess the copyright status of the works and any reproductions supplied as part of the loan,
• Confirm the lender is free to authorise reproductions, or if not, who should be contacted to obtain consent,
• Agree terms and conditions of reproduction with the lender or rights holders as appropriate, including new reproduction carried out by the exhibitor,
• Maintain accurate metadata about these assets, including rights information such as the licence terms and conditions, rights holder(s), source (if supplied with the loan).
• Ensure any contractual restrictions on reproductions and reuse of those reproductions, assertions of moral rights, or any other special requirements are factored into the exhibition design, management and marketing activities,
• For physical reproductions created by the exhibitor, label with the copyright holder’s name and year created,
• Where practical, for example with newly created digital images, embed relevant metadata about the work and the image into the image format, including rights information,
• Agree retention schedule for digital reproductions, and return any physical reproductions as required.
• Store digital assets in a secure digital asset or content management system, ideally server or Cloud based,
• Maintain accurate metadata about these assets, including rights information such as the licence terms and conditions, rights holder(s), source (if supplied with the loan).
• Maintain accurate metadata about these assets, including rights information such as the licence terms and conditions, rights holder(s), source (if supplied with the loan).

There may be an expectation by visitors that they can take photographs within exhibitions. Many venues allow photography within gallery spaces and of collection works, whereas many prohibit users taking photographs within exhibition spaces. This may be not only for copyright reasons, but also for security, visitor enjoyment, access or contractual reasons. For example, a lender of a copyright-expired artwork may contractually oblige the borrower to prohibit flash photography for preservation reasons.

Such photography – if it were to happen – would be a breach of the contract in addition to potentially raising copyright, privacy, security or other issues. Venues should therefore think extremely carefully about whether to allow photography in exhibition spaces, ensuring that very clear contracts govern such possible activity. If photography is contractually agreed, it is suggested that clear signage conveys that, “Photography is allowed for personal, non-commercial purposes only. It is the visitor’s responsibility to ensure no copyright is infringed. The use of flash and tripods is prohibited.”

In some cases, lenders will not own the rights to the works in their collections or have any information as to who owns the rights. Someone – either the lender or the exhibition team – will need to analyse the situation. They will need to assess the risks, try to identify rights holders and then to trace them to seek permission for any reproductions they may need to produce.

Example rights clearance workflow:

1. Acquire information about the authors/creators of the work and any embedded works, as appropriate,
2. Carry out a “diligent” search to identify rights holders (creators themselves, or their heirs) and find contact details,
3. Reach out to potential rights holders to explain the purpose of the communication,
4. If no response, try at least two more times or use different contact methods,
5. Document progress,
6. Store all correspondence documents securely.

The UK government has published guidelines on a diligent search to consider when applying for an orphan works licence.  This guidance is just that – a guide. There is no definitive list of sources to consult or activities to carry out, as there is so much variety in the different formats and types of works that can be considered an orphan work. However, the guidelines linked to above do provide lists for different categories of works: film, music and sound; literary works; still visual art; film footage (production level); printed music; unpublished literary works and photographs.

“There is no set procedure to follow for a diligent search, as it will depend on the information available: you need to show that the search was diligent. You should consider multiple sources where possible. Some sources will not be relevant to every search. To assist you, some example diligent searches are available in the diligent search guidance collection.” – Orphan works diligent search guidance, 16 November 2021.

A selection of useful UK-based resources:

• Museums
• National/deposit libraries
• National Archives (collections, but also birth and marriage records, etc.)
• Government resources (Probate register, Companies House)
• Picture libraries and other online collections such as:
  • Bridgeman Images
  • ArtUK
• Collecting societies
  • DACS (Design and Artists Copyright Society)
  • BAPLA (British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies)
  • PRS for MUSIC
  • PLS Clear (published books, journals, magazines and websites)
• Catalogues and databases
  • WATCH (Writers, Artists and Their Copyright Holders)
  • Nielsen (Not a free service, but does provide a free trial)
  • Society of Authors member search
  • Learning on Screen (member access only to Trilt database)

A copyright licence covers the terms and conditions of reproduction. The licensor (the owner of the copyright, or their representative) warrants that they are able to enter into such an agreement, and the licensee (the party requiring reproductions) agrees to abide by the limitations set by the licence.

In many cases, the licence can be included in the loan agreement, although where a loan agreement includes many different works, or where rights are owned by different parties, separate licences may be required.

It is worth restating that some rights and exceptions cannot be overridden by contract (and if they are, those clauses are not enforceable under UK law).

“All rights reserved” is a shorthand used for the default status of in-copyright works that are not subject to a licence or waiver. Rights holders may permit certain uses through a licence written into a loan agreement or copyright agreement, but these are generally limited, very specific, and are only granted to the licensee. Any other uses, by any other users, that are protected by copyright, are not permitted.

“Some rights reserved” may be appropriate when rights holders are interested in sharing their work more broadly and flexibly. For example, they may agree that works can be reproduced for any non-commercial purposes as long as they are attributed as the creator. Or they may allow reproduction and broad re-use as long as the work is not adapted or changed.

It is possible for rights holders to enforce reciprocal openness by downstream users by applying “copyleft” or “share alike” clauses to their licences. A work reused with such a licence must retain the same terms and conditions as the originating licence.

For these situations, the widely adopted Creative Commons licences are user-friendly and cover “some rights reserved” situations with versions providing different levels of restriction (e.g. non-commercial or no-derivatives).

There are six core licences for in-copyright works:

There are some important points to note about using Creative Commons licenses:

• Creative Commons licences are irrevocable – e.g. if you are supplied with a JPEG version of an image under a Creative Commons licence (legitimately assigned by the copyright holder), the rights holder cannot revoke the licence at a future date.
• Creative Commons licences are updated and modified over time – always include the licence title, version number, and link to the legal code on the Creative Commons website (where possible).
• Creative Commons licences can only be granted by the rights holder or their representative for the rights they control. In works with embedded rights (such as books with illustrations), it may be necessary to seek permission from 3^rd parties or clearly indicate what is not covered by the licence.
• Creative Commons also provides public domain tools including a copyright waiver (CC0).

Other open licences commonly used include the Open Government Licence, for data or publications produced by central government departments, and licences applicable to software code such as the MIT Licence or the GNU General Public License.

See Annex A for a sample loan agreement including terms and conditions to consider including related to reproduction. Depending on the works included in the loan, the type and nature of the lender and rights holder(s), such agreements may be very comprehensive (as in the included example) or they may be quite simple – for older works or those that are not intended for commercial purposes, an open licence might be appropriate (see below for more information on licences). For orphan works, a licence may not be appropriate as there is no rights holder to grant such a licence. In this case, the agreement may acknowledge this possibility and include an indemnification for the lender should the exhibition organisers decide to use reproductions under a risk-managed approach.

• Copyright User – engaging and educational copyright resource
• Copyright Literacy – access to mailing list, free webinars about copyright issues
• WIPO Lex – source of copyright legislation for WIPO states
• org – useful source of standardised copyright statements
• Padfield on Copyright for Archivists and Records Managers (2026) – link to book by Tim Padfield and Victoria Stobo

Links used in the body text of these copyright guidelines:

• Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
• CDPA Chapter 1
• CDPA Chapter III
• CDPA Chapter IV
• CDPA, section 116A-D
• Orphan works licensing scheme
• Orphan works register
• Guidelines on a diligent search
• Probate register
• Companies House
• Bridgeman Images
• ArtUK
• DACS
• BAPLA
• PRS for MUSIC
• PLS Clear
• WATCH
• Nielsen
• Society of Authors member search
• Learning on Screen
• Creative Commons website

Loan agreements between lender and exhibition organiser

The Word and PDF versions of this document include examples of possible clauses to be inserted into an agreement between lender and exhibition organiser.

Copyright agreements with rights holders (not lender)

Word and PDF versions of a sample form for use when the lender is not the copyright holder.  The form can be adapted for use when the object is copyright-expired but the owner’s consent is needed.

Copyright assignment

Word and PDF versions of a sample copyright assignment form, e.g. for use when new photographs are taken.

Hire agreement

Word and PDF versions of a document with examples of possible clauses for permitted reproductions that can be inserted into a hire agreement between exhibition organiser and venue, or subsequent advance information.

This topic was written by Naomi Korn, CEO and Founder of Naomi Korn Associates.  Naomi is one of the UK’s leading experts in copyright, data protection and licensing. She has supported the cultural, heritage, charity, education and private sectors since 1999.

For more copyright resources and training, visit the Naomi Korn Associates website.