Introduction

Public authorities are subject to many obligations to make information available proactively. The FOIA's requirement to adopt a publication scheme is just one of these. Together with the duty to respond to requests under the FOIA, there are wide-ranging rights of access to public authority information.

However, access to information is just the start of the story. The next thing to consider is what people are allowed to do with the information they can access, whatever route they access it through. Intellectual property law, most notably copyright, applies to any use that recipients want to make of all this information.

Public authorities usually retain copyright in information that they or their employees have created, so in theory they have some control over what people do with disclosed information. In practice, there are limitations on this control.

Recent years have witnessed the rise of open data. Open data is partially about giving people access to more information through FOI and transparency laws, but also about giving them more freedom over how that information can then be used. Changes to the law such as the RoPSI Regulations 2015 have sought to do this.

Many FOI officers include standard text in responses warning applicants that they must seek permission before re-using disclosed information. Some have sought to use copyright as a means to constrain the effect of the FOIA. Developments in recent years have limited what FOI officers and their colleagues can do in this regard.

This chapter explores how copyright affects what people can do with infor - mation that they access from public authorities, what limits public authorities can place on this, and how the growth of open data is affecting FOI and transparency more generally. It aims to help FOI officers to better understand the relevance of copyright and re-use laws to their work.

Copyright

Copyright protects the rights of those who create original works. Articles, books, photographs, paintings, sculptures and even computer databases can attract copyright protection. Information disclosed by public authorities under the FOIA and other laws is often (though not always) protected by copyright.

Under UK law it is not necessary to take any specific action for copyright to apply. Most will be familiar with the copyright symbol and the statement ‘© Paul Gibbons 2018’ or similar.