Charles David Lawson Clark (12 June 1933 – 6 October 2006) was a British publisher and lawyer, who was an authority on the law of copyright.

Life

Clark was born in London and studied at

Edinburgh Academy The Edinburgh Academy is an Independent school (United Kingdom), independent day school in Edinburgh, Scotland, which was opened in 1824. The original building, on Henderson Row in the city's New Town, Edinburgh, New Town, is now part of the Se ...

before reading law at

Jesus College, Oxford Jesus College (in full: Jesus College in the University of Oxford of Queen Elizabeth's Foundation) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. It is in the centre of the city, on a site between Turl Street, Ship St ...

. He was an editor for the legal publishers

Sweet and Maxwell Sweet & Maxwell is a British publisher specialising in legal publications. It joined the Associated Book Publishers in 1969; ABP was purchased by the International Thomson Organization in 1987, and is now part of Thomson Reuters. Its British ...

and was then

called to the bar The call to the bar is a legal term of art in most common law jurisdictions where persons must be qualified to be allowed to argue in court on behalf of another party and are then said to have been "called to the bar" or to have received "call to ...

Inner Temple The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, commonly known as the Inner Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court and is a professional associations for barristers and judges. To be called to the Bar and practise as a barrister in England and Wal ...

in 1960. He then worked for

Penguin Books Penguin Books is a British publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.Frederick Forsyth Frederick McCarthy Forsyth (born 25 August 1938) is an English novelist and journalist. He is best known for thrillers such as ''The Day of the Jackal'', ''The Odessa File'', '' The Fourth Protocol'', '' The Dogs of War'', ''The Devil's Alter ...

and

Anthony Burgess John Anthony Burgess Wilson, (; 25 February 1917 – 22 November 1993), who published under the name Anthony Burgess, was an English writer and composer. Although Burgess was primarily a comic writer, his Utopian and dystopian fiction, d ...

. From 1980 - 1984 he was Chief Executive of Hutchinson Ltd, which included the publishing operation and the printing company. Clark was actively involved with the charity MIND from the late 1960s until his death; he was Chairman from 1976-79. He also founded Bookrest, the money-raising arm of the Book Trade Benevolent Society. He assisted the Publishers' Association with its submissions to the Whitford committee on copyright law, which led to the

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988c 48, also known as the CDPA, is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that received Royal Assent on 15 November 1988. It reformulates almost completely the statutory basis of copyright law ( ...

. He became legal advisor to the Association after leaving Hutchinson in 1984, working with copyright issues at national and international level (including the consequences of European legislation such as extending copyright from 50 to 70 years after the year in which the author died, and of membership of the

World Trade Organization The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an intergovernmental organization that regulates and facilitates international trade. With effective cooperation in the United Nations System, governments use the organization to establish, revise, and e ...

. He was concerned to ensure that there was a fair system of remuneration for authors and for publishers. He helped establish the

Copyright Licensing Agency The Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) is a UK non-profit organisation established in 1983 to perform collective licensing on behalf of its members the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS), Publishers' Licensing Services(PLS), the ...

in 1983, acting as its legal adviser until 1999. He also worked for the

Federation of European Publishers The Federation of European Publishers (FEP) is an independent, non-commercial umbrella association of book publishers associations in the European Union and Europe. FEP represents 29 national associations of book publishers of the European Union ...

and

International Publishers Copyright Council The International Publishers Association (IPA) is an international publishing industry federation of national publisher associations representing book and journal publishing. It is a non-profit and non-governmental organization, founded in 1896 to ...

on copyright matters, and was general editor of ''Publishing Agreements: a Book of Precedents'' (1980). Other work was published under the title ''The Answer to the Machine is in the Machine and Other Collected Writings'' (2005). His knowledge of copyright law led to him being described by

Mark Le Fanu Mark may refer to: Currency * Bosnia and Herzegovina convertible mark, the currency of Bosnia and Herzegovina * East German mark, the currency of the German Democratic Republic * Estonian mark, the currency of Estonia between 1918 and 1927 * Fi ...

, of the

Society of Authors The Society of Authors (SoA) is a United Kingdom trade union for professional writers, illustrators and literary translators, founded in 1884 to protect the rights and further the interests of authors. , it represents over 12,000 members and as ...

, as "the peer of contracts experts, Lord Clark of Copyright".

References

1933 births 2006 deaths British publishers (people) British barristers People educated at Edinburgh Academy Alumni of Jesus College, Oxford 20th-century British businesspeople {{UK-business-bio-1930s-stub