1. Introduction

This part of the UKHO's website describes how you can get our permission to reproduce our material and explains a little about our standard terms and conditions.

2. The Re-Use Of Public Sector Information Regulations 2005

The Re-use of Public Sector Information Regulations (RPSI) came into force on 1 July 2005 in response to an EU Directive.

The regulations can be found at http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2005/20051515.htm.

The regulations allow public sector bodies, such as the UKHO, to make their information available to be re-used by any applicant making a request for re-use in accordance with section 6 of the regulations. However, it is not compulsory for public sector bodies to allow re-use.

The Freedom of Information Act (FOI) and the Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) are concerned with a citizen's right to access information. RPSI provides a framework to grant permission to individuals or to public or private entities to re-use that information.

The UKHO's policy on Freedom of Information can be found through this link.

3. What is copyright?

Crown copyright
All work the UKHO creates is protected by Crown copyright and/or database rights in the UK and is also protected elsewhere in the world through international treaties. We control the copyright to our work under authority from the Controller of Her Majesty's Stationery Office (who is also Director of the Office for Public Sector Information (OPSI)). You can visit its website by following this link:

www.opsi.gov.uk

You may not reproduce, adapt or translate our material in any way (including electronically, by photocopying or recording) without our permission in writing.

You must obtain their permission in addition to ours. Some organisations allow us to grant licences on their behalf - in these cases you only need to get one licence agreement from us and we will clear the rights with those organisations. A list of these organisations can be found by following this link:

List of organisations

Many companies, under licence from us, publish material that has come from our material. This material will usually have an acknowledgement to the Crown, to us or to the Controller of HMSO. It is protected by Crown copyright and the copyright of the publisher. You must always get our permission and the permission of the publisher before you can copy it. This material can also contain material protected by others, but the publisher should advise you of this.

Period of protection
Crown copyright exists in all works we create for 125 years from the end of the calendar year in which it is created. If the work is commercially published within 75 years of it being created, it is protected for 50 years from the end of the year it was commercially published.

Third-party intellectual property rights may protect our material that is no longer protected by Crown copyright. Please contact us for advice. Our contact details can be found by following this link:

Contact details

If our material is no longer protected, there are no requirements to obtain our permission before copying the material. However, you may not reproduce our brands, you must still show an acknowledgement to us and you may not pass off the material as being from us. Again, please contact us for advice using the link above.

4. The UKHO Chief Executive's commitment to fair information trading

The UKHO's licensing policy has been accredited by OPSI (formerly HMSO)'s Information Fair Trader Scheme (IFTS). IFTS accreditation provides external validation of an organisation's information trading activity. It reassures users that an accredited organisation's processes and policies are compliant and consistent with government policy on information trading and that they meet the needs of existing or potential customers. Our Chief Executive has made a personal commitment to make sure we trade fairly in information. The commitment can be seen at the following link:

UKHO's Chief Executive's commitment to information fair trading

We encourage you to use our material for new purposes. However, we have to recover our operational costs from selling and licensing our products and services and make a positive contribution back to the UK taxpayer. We use the revenue we receive from copyright licensing to help us create and maintain our material and continually improve safety.

5. Licensing Policy

Most UKHO data is available for re-use under licence, either through the free on-line licensing system (for non-navigational, non-commercial or low value commercial use, currently defined as below £3000) or through a commercial licence agreement. Most of our licences are granted free-of-charge; if your re-use passes any of the 4 tests below, you will qualify for a free licence.

• Test 1: Your product or service has no commercial value. (Usually we consider that something has a commercial value if it might be in competition with something that other people sell. So even if you give something away, or you sell it for very little (for example, for promotional reasons), it may still have a commercial value.)
• Test 2: The total commercial value of all your products or services that contain our material is less than £3,000 in any one year.
• Test 3: The reproduction is in magazines, newspapers, calendars, promotional brochures or other publications that are published periodically and:
  • the number of tidal predictions in a single edition is limited to either a single port (for up to one year), up to 10 ports (but only for a month), or for any number of ports (but only for seven days);
  • astronomical and calendarial data (taken from HM Nautical Almanac Office Astronomical Information Sheets) is limited to the current year and the next four years;
  • the total area of all images reproduced in a single edition is less that 600cm2 ; and
  • the total text reproduced in a single edition is less than 600 words.
  • the total extracts reproduced from Admiralty Notices to Mariners cover up to a maximum of three pages at A4 size and are not customised to individual users’ requirements.
• Test 4: You will use the material on television or in films, or in a video or DVD recorded programme (but not to instruct others).

Please note that, even where there is no charge, you must apply for our permission through the free on-line licensing system.

Significant commercial re-use of our material will incur a charge. Please refer to UKHO for further information on detailed pricing.

There are a small number of exceptions in our licensing policy. If we reject your application because of one of these exceptions, we will try to offer another solution and work with you to revise your application.

We may refuse to allow you to reproduce material that:

• concerns public security, defence, state security (including its economic wellbeing) and legal proceedings;
• is protected by the rights of another organisation and that organisation has not given their permission.relates to an identified or identifiable person and they have not given their permission for it to be re-used (that is the Data Protection Act does not allow it); or

Also, we may refuse to license data to individuals or organisations that:

• have previously copied intellectual property owned or managed by the Crown without permission and this was not settled with us (or another part of the UK Government); or;
• do not have enough creditworthiness (according to our check with a credit reference agency) to pay any licence fees and are not willing to offer another method of payment (for example, a bank guarantee, payment in advance, or similar).

Where we offer a licence, our licence agreements contain some common terms and conditions, some of which are summarised here. Please contact UKHO for example Licence Agreements.

• We do not restrict your re-use of UKHO material, though we do define your re-use purpose so that we can offer the right licence agreement. If you want to use the material in a different way, it might already be covered by your agreement, it might require a small amendment to the agreement or it might require a new agreement.
• We will normally allow you to reproduce our material on the internet (subject to certain restrictions)
• We require you to include an appropriate acknowledgement to the UKHO on any reproductions of our material
• We may allow you to grant limited sub-licences (for certain types of licence agreements)
• We require you to protect our material from unauthorised reproduction.
• We do not normally grant the rights to use our trademarks.• We are not allowed, by regulation, to grant exclusive or sole licences (see The Re-use of Public Sector Information Regulations 2005 , clause 14)

We reserve the right to terminate your licence, in accordance with the terms of the licence. Please refer to the individual licence for the full conditions, but reasons for termination include:

• You breach your licence agreement in a way that cannot be put right, such as granting a sub licence without our permission, releasing unprotected copyright material on a computer accessible to 3rd parties, you reproduce material that is the intellectual property of a 3rd party without their permission.
• You breach your licence agreement in a way that can be put right, such as failure to pay any royalties or licence fees on time, but do not remedy the breach within the specified period (usually 30 days).
• You enter receivership or administration.

6. Pricing

Free of charge
If you qualify for a low-value and non-commercial licence then you will not be charged a fee for reproducing UKHO copyright material. Please remember that you may still have to get permission from other people if you are copying a part of our material that they originally provided to us. They might charge you for giving you their permission even if we do not.

Commercial Charges
If you do not qualify for a free copyright licence then please contact us for more information.

7. How to apply for a licence

To launch the UKHO's Copyright Online Licensing System, click the following link:

UKHO's Copyright Online Licensing System

If you do not meet our standard qualifying criteria, then the system will automatically complete an application form and send it to the UKHO's licensing team, who will then process it. You may have to pay a licensing fee. We try to process these applications within five working days of receiving them, although we can usually process simple applications much quicker. If we are not able to process your application within five working days, we will let you know we have received your application and we will give you an estimated time to complete the process.

If you prefer not to use our online system then you can download an electronic application form by right-clicking the following link and choosing the 'save as' option.

Non-commercial/low-value re-use application form

You can either complete the form and e-mail it to us at copyright@ukho.gov.uk, or print it and fax or post it to us.

For commercial re-use applications
You can download an electronic application form by right-clicking the following link and choosing the 'save as' option.

Commercial re-use application form.

8. What information is available for re-use?

You can check what information is available for re-use and the terms and conditions of re-use by using the following link.

Information available for re-use

9. Contacting the UKHO licensing team

Please feel free to contact one of the licensing team using one of the methods below.