UK copyright law is set out in the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Copyright seeks to protect the form of expression of ideas and not the ideas themselves, which may be protected by confidentiality. The primary purpose of copyright law is to reward authors for the creation of original works, that is, works where the author has expended independent effort to create the work.

Copyright law is intended to prevent copying but does not provide a monopoly; it does not matter if a similar or identical work already exists provided it has not been copied.

Copyright lasts for a set period, most often the life of the author plus 70 years from the end of the calendar year of his death. No formalities (such as registration) need to be observed in the UK for a work to receive copyright protection; protection automatically applies to all works recorded in any form provided that they meet certain requirements.

We can advise about whether your work meets the requirements to be protected by copyright and how you can show that you work was in existence at a certain date. Please note that the popular method of posting documents to yourself will not be effective.