This website might help, the serial numbers appear to correspond with year-dates: <http://www.oldpicturepostcard.co.uk/dating-frith-postcards.htm> JK On 21 February 2012 11:58, Tim Powys-Lybbe <[email protected]> wrote: > On 21 Feb at 10:17, Brian Randell <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Hi: > > > > I have over the years purchased a few old picture postcards (typically > > ones published by Francis Frith) at antique fairs, and then have asked > > (and received) advice as to which ones it would be OK to put online, > > being out of copyright. > > > > Several picture postcard dealers have been able to answer me based on > > the layout and style of the printing on the back of Frith postcards. > > Unfortunately I do not recall the details, and was wondering whether > > anyone here knows, or can point me to a source of such information. (I > > can't find this information in the pages of the Francis Frith Photo > > Library, despite all they do say about copyright and dating - their > > apparent preference being to respond to individual copyright queries.) > > The question is who own the copyright. If the photo was taken by > Francis Frith himself, then he would have owned the copyright and it > would have survived. in Britain, for 50 years (had he lived a tad longer > it would have been 70 years) after his death in 1898. So these > photographs expired in 1948. > > But many of the photographs were taken under contract by his staff or by > sub-contractors. By then he had founded a company and undoubtedly that > company bought the service and held the copyright. This area of > commercially commissioned and owned copyright is unclear and I think it > only lasts for 50 years after the date of first publication. > > The firm closed in 1968 and presumably the last of the photographs had > been taken by then. Any taken by contractors in 1968 would have their > copyright (under the rule suggested above) expire in 2018. We are now > in 2012. I would suggest that there are very few photographs left with > any copyright on them at all. > > Publish and be damned? > > -- > Tim Powys-Lybbe [email protected] > for a miscellany of bygones: http://powys.org/ > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the > quotes in the subject and the body of the message >