UKHO Homepage
On Line Application
Terms and Conditions
Information Catalogue
About Us
Contacts
More Information
FAQs
Links
REPRODUCING ADMIRALTY CHARTS AND PUBLICATIONS

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:

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

Material from other organisations
Much of the material we publish or hold comes from copyright material belonging to other organisations - usually another hydrographic office or a port authority. This material is protected by Crown copyright and by the copyright of those organisations. Most products clearly show the organisations involved either on the front of a chart (in the source data diagram or source notes) or in the introduction of a book.

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:

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.

  • For example, an Admiralty chart published in 1950 was protected by Crown copyright until 31 December 2000. A new edition of the same chart published in 1970 will be protected until 31 December 2020.

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:

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:

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 (see the note below).
  • Test 2: The total commercial value (see the note below) 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 a magazine, newspaper or other regularly published document and:
    • the number of tidal predictions in a single edition is limited to either a single port (for up to a 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 next two 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.
  • 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).

The three main pre-conditions for free licensing are:

  • You must get our permission before you reuse our material.
  • Copies cannot be used to help navigate unless they are used with the original material.
  • You must have bought (or legally obtained) the material you want to copy and continue to hold that material during the licence period.

Note: 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. We will assess the commercial value by comparing it with the average price for similar products. For example, we usually consider a product containing an annual tidal prediction for one port as having a commercial value of £1. Please contact us for advice.

Commercial re-use of chart data
We allow most people, subject to certain terms and conditions, a non-exclusive non-transferable licence to reproduce our chart data for the purpose of:

  • internal research and development;
  • internal quality assurance processes relating to the reproduced material;
  • creating and manufacturing the reproduced material; and
  • distributing the reproduced material to end-users subject to the restrictions, within the territory either directly or using distributors or agents.

Please contact the copyright section for information on this type of reproduction as we are unable to offer this licensing service online. You can download an electronic application form by right-clicking the following link and choosing the 'save as' option.

Commercial re-use of other data
We also allow most people to reproduce other data for commercial purposes for example, tidal data, wrecks data, lights list data under similar conditions to the chart data detailed above.

Please contact the copyright section for information on this type of reproduction as we are unable to offer this licensing service online. You can download an electronic application form by right-clicking the following link and choosing the 'save as' option.

Exceptions
We may refuse certain people who apply if they:
  • 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 they are not willing to offer another method of payment (for example, a bank guarantee, payment in advance, and so on).
We may refuse to grant certain applications if you want to:
  • produce an exact copy (or a very similar copy) of one of our products where it would cause customers to be confused as to who published the product; or
  • produce a product that, in our opinion, is likely to adversely affect safety.

We may refuse to allow you to reproduce material that:

  • concerns public security, defence, state security (including its economic wellbeing) and legal proceedings; 
  • 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 
  • is protected by the rights of another organisation and that organisation has not given their permission.  

If we reject your application, we will try to offer another solution and work with you to revise your application.

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.

For information, we operate two different pricing systems for commercial re-use of our material. Either:
    - a fixed charge plus an ongoing royalty calculated as a percentage of your revenue; or
    - an ongoing royalty calculated as a fixed price per copy made or distributed.

7. How to apply for a licence

For non-commercial and low-value applications you can use our online licensing system. If you meet our standard qualifying criteria for a free copyright licence, then the system will automatically generate a draft licence agreement for you to review and send it to you by email. Once you have accepted the draft version of the licence agreement by replying to the e-mail, we will e-mail you the final agreement and you can then reproduce the listed material. The process should only take about 15 minutes to complete.

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

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.

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.

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.

9. Contacting the UKHO licensing team

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

Copyright Section:
E-mail copyright@ukho.gov.uk

Telephone in UK
Outside UK 		  01823 337900 x 4146
+ 44 1823 339700 x 4146
Fax in UK
Outside UK		   01823 354045
+44 1823 354045

Address Commercial & Legal (Intellectual Property)
UK Hydrographic Office
Admiralty Way
Taunton
Somerset
TA1 2DN
United Kingdom

10. Contacting the UKHO licensing team

Please see our How to Contact Us page for details of our complaints procedure or how to provide us with your feedback. You may also like to refer to OPSI's website.