Normally a published work will include a copyright notice
giving details of the copyrightholder(s).
Where there is no copyright notice, if there are publisher or author details you should contact the
author or publisher and check the copyright in the work. If you cannot trace the publisher, or
have gone out of business, then you will have to trace the author, his or her literary agent or any
descendants if the author is dead. Again, find out whether there are any works by the author
and contact the publishers of those books - they should be able to put you in touch with the
principle copyright holder for the author. If, however, there is nothing in print by the author, there
some organizations that may be able to help you trace the author or find out more information
about the copyright holder.
A useful online resource is WATCH (Writers, Artists, and
Their Copyright Holders), which
maintains a database of copyright holders and contact persons. The majority of the database
contains the names and addresses of copyright holders or contact persons for authors and artists
whose archives are housed, in whole or in part, in libraries and archives in North America and the
United Kingdom. The database is available at www.watch- file.com. Some uses are subject
collective licensing and the licences may be obtained from a collecting society. These
organisations may be able to help you identify the right owner even if they cannot give a licence.
If none of the interest groups or online databases knows
or represents the author of a particular
work then you should research the author of the work, and, if different, the copyright owner. See
Who owns copyright?
for more information. Tools to use would be Internet searches, telephone
directories and directories of authors. You could also contact the publisher (if known). If the
copyright owner still remains unknown at this point then it might be worth putting an advert into a
trade journal or a national newspaper asking for the information. This helps to demonstrate that
possible avenues have been explored.
Other groups and databases include:
Other ideas for tracing the copyright holder include:
writing to archivists responsible for collections
of the authors papers; writing to biographers or other scholars who have worked on the author;
checking the acknowledgements of published works about the author; trying author searches on
the World Wide Web; sending a letter to the authors last- known address; checking authors
directories in libraries (e.g. Contemporary Authors published by Gale Research).
If all these methods fail, then you have to decide whether
to reprint the work with the risk that the
copyright holder will later find out and object. If you choose this route, you must state in the
acknowledgements section that you have made every effort to trace the copyright owner and that
anyone claiming copyright should get in touch with you. You could need to pay a fee (for the use
you have already enjoyed) if this happened, although this is unlikely where you have made thorough
efforts to locate the copyright holder. Be sure to keep a record of your enquiries.