How Print Created Modern Copyright and Legal Publishing

Copyright law exists because of the printing press. Before print, copying a document by hand was so slow that unauthorised copying barely needed regulating. Once a press could turn out hundreds of identical copies a day, the law had to catch up — and Britain wrote the rulebook the rest of the world still follows.

The King's Printer

The office of King's Printer dates back to 1485, under Henry VII, making the Crown one of the earliest organisations anywhere to run large-scale, official printing — statutes, proclamations and official notices, produced as broadsides and posted publicly for a population that mostly couldn't read a handwritten original even if they'd seen one.

Control Through Monopoly

In 1557, the Stationers' Company was chartered and given a printing monopoly, effectively making it responsible for both publishing and censorship in England — nothing could be legally printed without its say-so. The Licensing of the Press Act 1662 extended state control further, until Parliament simply declined to renew it in 1694, leaving a gap that print regulation badly needed filling.

1710: The World's First Copyright Law

The Statute of Anne received royal assent on 5 April 1710 and came into force five days later. It's recognised as the world's first copyright statute: authors, not just printers, were given legal rights over their work — 14 years of protection, renewable once, with 21 years granted for works already in print. It was eventually repealed by the Copyright Act 1842, but its basic idea, that an author owns rights in their own work, went on to shape copyright law in the United States and beyond.

Law in Print Today

Government legislation is now authenticated and published digitally through legislation.gov.uk, but businesses still rely on print for a huge range of legal and compliance material: statutory notices, health and safety signage, terms displayed in-store, and the everyday documents — contracts, letterheads, compliance posters — every business needs on file or on the wall.

Where This Connects to What We Print

Statutory and compliance signage, in-store notices and business stationery are exactly what our business stationery & publications and large format & signage services cover.

Frequently asked questions

What was the world's first copyright law?

The Statute of Anne, which received royal assent in England on 5 April 1710 and came into force on 10 April 1710.

Who was the King's Printer?

An official role dating to 1485, responsible for producing statutes, royal proclamations and official notices for the Crown.

Why did copyright law develop in Britain?

The printing press made mass, exact copying possible for the first time, creating a need to legally define who had the right to copy a work — a problem that barely existed before print.

Browse our business stationery & publications page, or see the History of the Printing Press for the technology behind it all.