Republic of Ireland: copyright history

The Copyright Act 1911, when it was passed, applied to southern Ireland as part of the UK. When the two parliaments for the south and north were established by the Government of Ireland Act 1920, copyright was a subject reserved by Westminster. That Act was repealed in 1922, when the south became a self-governing dominion within the British Empire. The 1911 Act applied to self-governing dominions only if their local legislatures decided that it should, and local legislatures could amend or repeal that or any other Westminster copyright legislation so long as no existing rights were prejudiced. The Irish Free State duly provided its own copyright law by the Industrial and Commercial Property (Protection) Act 1927. This applied retrospectively to works created on or after 6 December 1921 but material created before that date continued to be protected under the 1911 Act. The Republic of Ireland ceased to be a dominion in 1949 by the Ireland Act 1949, and since then the Republic has twice passed new copyright legislation: the Copyright Act 1963 (see 7.1.4) and the Copyright Act 2000 (see 7.1.5). Strong similarities to the law in the UK remain, however, because the law of the Irish Republic is rooted in the common law tradition (see 1.1.1, 1.2.2), and both countries are now required to implement the harmonized aspects of European law, such as those for the duration of copyright (see 1.2.8, 2.1.28, 9.1.3).

1911 ss25, 26; 1920 s4(1); 1927 (Ireland) s174

Republic of Ireland: works created before 6 December 1921

The provisions of the Copyright Act 1911 continued to apply in the Republic, in particular to the subsistence of copyright and the ownership of it in works created in Ireland before 6 December 1921 (but see 7.1.5). This means that, for works to which the 1911 Act continues to apply: