Will the UK tinker with CDPA 1998 to introduce other unique Peter Pan style perpetual royalty rights to fund the arts?

Richard Morrison of The Times has written a piece (pw) on a proposal, by former government advisor Jamie Njoku-Goodwin, to raise funds for the arts by cloning the Peter Pan/Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) right to receive perpetual royalties after the expiration of copyright, and applying it to other works. The royalties would be paid into a cultural endowment fund, administered by a collective rights organisation and used "for good".

What more do we know about the proposal?

In this voluntary scheme, Jamie Njoku-Goodwin appears to have in his sights the copyright works of composers, where protection is due to expire in the next couple of decades and whose performance royalties are already being funnelled into well established charities. As well as these works, that sit neatly alongside the Peter Pan model, Njoku-Goodwin would add what you might consider to be more "blockbuster" works, say from Tolkien or Ian Fleming.

What is the unique perpetual royalty right for the benefit of GOSH in respect of "Peter Pan"?

Copyright in J.M. Barrie's play expired in December 1987 and it was the then new CDPA 1988 that created a unique right that exists independently of the normal copyright framework set out in Part I of CDPA 1988. The right entitles GOSH Children's Charity to a royalty (or alternative forms of remuneration) in respect of any public performance, commercial publication, or communication to the public of the whole or any substantial part of the work or an adaptation of it. The right falls away if the hospital ceases to have purposes which include the care of sick children, ie moves away from its charitable purpose.

There are two categories of exceptions where no royalty is payable: first, anything which could lawfully have been done immediately before copyright expired on 31st December 1987 without the licence of the then copyright owner; and second, anything which, if copyright still subsisted, would be a copyright exception under CDPA 1988. Disputes to determine reasonable royalty or remuneration are resolved in the Copyright Tribunal.

What are the chances of Njoku-Goodwin's proposal making it into CDPA 1988?

In endorsing the contents of Morrison's article, Njoku-Goodwin does ask for views on the proposal but does so from a X account in which he claims his "views are his own". On the face of it this doesn't look like the government putting feelers out. The timing of the proposal, with a new PM facing an array of other challenges, suggests this is not a government priority.

If it were to proceed, there would be a consultation (or two) where not allowing these works to fall naturally into the public domain when copyright expires is likely to raise plenty of objections. First of all, it would go against current UK copyright law as well as international treaties and conventions on reciprocity such as Berne. Creatives themselves, prevented from leveraging existing IP (via spin offs and adaptations) would also likely oppose the idea. You could expect a lot of lobbying from production companies, platforms and broadcasters who are constantly looking at ways to adapt and leverage existing well-known IP.

Then there's the detail of the scheme – how will it be funded, how will it operate and whose works will be chosen – these would be ripe for heavy scrutiny.

GOSH's perpetual right to Peter Pan royalties works because it is narrow: a single play, with well defined exploitation channels, and a mechanism to manage the income.  Scaling this to the entire body of work of multiple authors and artists, across all forms of exploitation, is arguably a qualitatively different proposition.

The interaction between copyright and artificial intelligence has been regularly in the minds of the government, the public and creatives for the last three years while the debate about whether to introduce a broad copyright exception for text and data mining has rumbled on (and on). We cover this in detail in our AI guide. A small part of that timeline of events – the parliamentary ping pong concerning the then Data (Use and Access) Bill in 2025, will have made the government nervous about using up limited policymaking resources on any proposal that might attract resistance. It has bigger fish to fry.