The United Kingdom Government Licensing Framework (UKGLF) default position is that public sector information should be licensed for use and re-use free of charge under the Open Government Licence (OGL). However, there are specific circumstances where information may be licensed under different terms to OGL. In these instances public sector bodies must satisfy themselves that:
- they comply with the Re-use of Public Sector Information (PSI) Regulations 2015
- if they are a Crown body, they have a Delegation of Authority from the Keeper of Public Records
- if they are a non-Crown body such as a museum or archive wishing to license Crown copyright information from their collections, they must also have a Delegation of Authority
Find Case Law licensing arrangements
In consultation with the Ministry of Justice and the Judicial Executive Board, The National Archives has developed two free-to-use licences for the re-use of content from the Find Case Law service.
- The Open Justice Licence enables the re-use of court judgments and tribunal decisions. No application is required to use the material under the terms of this licence, but Open Justice Licence terms specifically exclude computational analysis of judgments and tribunal decisions and compiling a search engine index.
- The transactional licence permits Find Case Law judgments and decisions to be re-used for purposes such as computational analysis or providing website search services. Re-users will need to apply for this licence.
Open Supreme Court licence
The Open Supreme Court licence was developed in collaboration with the Supreme Court to enable the use and re-use of Supreme Court information, while reflecting the court’s status and dignity as the final court of appeal.
Developer licence
The Developer licence may be used by Crown bodies that have a Delegation of Authority to charge for the re-use of information. It may also be used by public sector bodies holding non-Crown copyright information, providing this complies with the PSI Regulations 2015.
The licence can be used alongside a registration scheme, to allow registered members to gain access to, and work with, data; enabling them to evaluate ideas, build prototypes and identify commercially viable opportunities. The licence is free of charge and operates on a six or 12 month rolling basis (or three months where the datasets include third party data) subject to membership of the registration scheme.
Non-Commercial Government Licence
The Non-Commercial Government licence may be used by public sector bodies that have a Delegation of Authority to license Crown copyright material non-commercially. It may also be used by public sector bodies holding non-Crown copyright information in accordance with the PSI Regulations 2015.
Charged Licence
The Charged licence may be used by public sector bodies to license the re-use of datasets under s102 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, if this re-use falls outside the scope of the PSI Regulations 2015.