Vocabulary
The marks
A complete verso names a legal basis, a use, and any excluded layers. Do not print "PRA" alone.
Legal basis: two proposed PRA permission-basis types
PRA-A records a documented permission instrument from an identified rights holder or authorised representative. PRA-B records a documented national or statutory authority. These are two proposed PRA permission-basis types, not an exhaustive statement of lawful reproduction; other lawful bases may exist outside this classification.
| Mark | Kind | Asserts | Does not assert |
|---|---|---|---|
| PRA-A | Licence pointer | A rights holder or authorised representative granted the listed acts, components, territory, and term. | Not a statute or public-domain finding. |
| PRA-B | Licence pointer | A named authority, identified as competent under applicable national law, issued a territorial licence after the required process. | Not worldwide and not a platform licence. |
Silence after notice is not consent. A located owner who does not answer is not unlocatable. Source B cannot be issued by an ordinary platform or an ordinary CMO merely because a search was filed.
Status or permission: what each element is
A mark's letters do not tell you whether it is permission or information. This table does.
| Element | Function | Is it permission? |
|---|---|---|
| PRA-A | Records a rights-holder permission instrument | Only to the extent of the underlying instrument |
| PRA-B | Records a national or statutory pathway | Only to the extent of the applicable law or authority |
| PD-V | Records a proposed territorial public-domain finding | No; it is a status record |
| COMP-X | Identifies excluded or separately treated components | No |
| P / N / C / T / R | Describes intended use or handling | No, unless linked to a valid basis |
| PRA-ID | Identifies the record | No |
A PRA-ID identifies a record; it does not create a right.
Use profiles: not licences by themselves
| Profile | Purpose | Critical limit |
|---|---|---|
| PRA-P | Limited personal copy | Only where Source A or national law already allows it; no universal one-copy identity log. |
| PRA-N | Non-commercial institutional or community reprint | No commercial resale unless authorised; remuneration may still be due under national law. |
| PRA-C | Commercial reprint | Needs explicit commercial permission, a posted national tariff, and reporting. No tariff, no PRA-C under Source B. |
| PRA-T | Translation | Translation rights are separate. First pilots should treat PRA-T as Source A only. |
| PRA-R | Territory- or language-limited use | Must be reassessed if an authorised edition enters the relevant market; it may expire, narrow, or remain active depending on the underlying authority. |
A profile is not independently operative. It must point to the Source A deed or Source B decision that supplies its legal authority.
Proposed status marks: not PRA licences
These two marks are proposed for the reprint and library trades. They are not WIPO or Creative Commons standards. They map outbound to existing vocabularies. See Built to map, not replace below.
| Mark | Kind | Asserts | Does not assert |
|---|---|---|---|
| PD-V | Status statement (proposed) | After a documented search and assessment, specified components are believed free of copyright restrictions in specified territories as of a stated date. | Not CC0, not a licence, and not a legal determination; it does not cover new typesetting, notes, or cover by implication. |
| COMP-X | Status statement (proposed) | Named components are outside the grant or outside the PD-V finding. | Not a finding that those components are free of rights. |
PD-V is a proposed status statement, not a licence or certification. It records that, after a documented search and assessment, specified components are believed to be free of copyright restrictions in specified territories as of a stated date. It does not create permission, determine law conclusively, or address every non-copyright restriction; moral rights, trademark, privacy, contractual, cultural, or other limits may still apply.
COMP-X is a component-exclusion statement. It does not state that excluded material is free of rights; it states only that the material is outside the claimed scope. Each entry must specify: the component; its creator or rights claimant where known; the reason for exclusion; whether it is omitted, separately licensed, or retained under another basis; the relevant territory; and the relevant term.
Built to map, not replace
PRA is designed as a print-facing companion layer. Where an existing rights statement, licence, public-domain tool, institutional record, or national registry applies, the PRA record should link to it rather than duplicate or override it. RightsStatements.org already provides rights statements and uncertainty-oriented categories; its statements are not themselves general licences. Creative Commons' Public Domain Mark is intended for works believed free of known restrictions worldwide, whereas PD-V is proposed for territory- and component-specific assessments. HathiTrust demonstrates operational rights metadata at scale, and the EUIPO out-of-commerce works portal demonstrates public information and opt-out mechanisms for out-of-commerce works. PRA adds the physical-copy, component, and reprint workflow; it does not replace those systems.
The novelty PRA claims is cumulative, not categorical: a print-legible notice, resolvable identifier, component-level attribution, territorial qualification, event-based history, and explicit separation between information and legal authority. This is a design-combination claim, not a claim that no individual feature exists elsewhere.
Source B is not a novel legal mechanism. Administrative licensing after a diligent search is established practice in Canada (Copyright Act, s.77, since the 1990s), the United Kingdom (Orphan Works Licensing Scheme, since 2014), and Japan (Copyright Act, Art. 67, reformed 2023). India's Copyright Act, 1957, s.31A addresses works whose author is dead, unknown, or untraceable, and is the closest domestic analogue to Source B for the reprint trade discussed in the provenance addendum. See the full Sources and related systems list in Paper I for case law and further citations, including the CJEU's Soulier decision on tacit consent and the rejected Google Books settlement.
| PRA concept | Closest external analogue | Limitation |
|---|---|---|
| PRA-B: national pathway | RightsStatements.org InC-RUU; relevant national orphan/out-of-commerce system | A status statement is not itself a licence; PRA-B requires an actual national legal basis. |
| PRA-B: EU pathway | InC-OW-EU and EU legal framework | Restricted to applicable EU conditions and eligible institutions; not exportable as a universal permission. |
| PD-V | Creative Commons Public Domain Mark; RightsStatements.org qualified public-domain statements | PD-V must name territories and components; it is not equivalent to PDM or any RightsStatements.org code. |
| Status and event history | HathiTrust Rights Database | HathiTrust governs digital access in its system; it is an operational precedent, not a print-authorisation system. |
| Public transparency and opt-out | EUIPO out-of-commerce works portal | Its legal scope is defined by EU law; PRA's wider profiles would require separate national authority. |
| COMP-X | No direct one-to-one equivalent | A proposed physical attribution and provenance convention, not an independent rights-status code. |
| PRA-ID | Persistent URI patterns such as RightsStatements.org, DOI, ARK, or Handle | Must be persistent, resolvable, and independently verifiable; it does not replace ISBN, ISNI, CMO, or national identifiers. |
Canonical evidence fields
PRA does not use one universal linear ranking in which a court decision, licence, rights-holder declaration, and independent review are treated as interchangeable. Each record exposes separate evidence-source, review-status, authority-status, and challenge-status fields, because these answer different questions and are not interchangeable.
Evidence source identifies what supports the claim:
- Rights-holder declaration.
- Publisher or institutional declaration.
- Documented diligent-search file.
- Government or statutory record.
- Court or administrative decision.
- Licence, deed, or written permission.
- Independent third-party review.
- Other identified source.
Review status identifies who examined the record:
- Self-declared.
- Institutionally reviewed.
- Independently reviewed.
- Authority-reviewed, where a named authority has performed or adopted the review.
Authority status identifies the relationship to an official body:
- No authority claimed.
- Linked to an institutional record.
- Authority-recorded.
- Authority-issued, where the authority itself issued the underlying decision or licence.
Challenge status identifies dispute position:
- Unchallenged.
- Challenged.
- Under review.
- Suspended.
- Resolved.
- Invalidated.
These fields are not collapsed into a universal ranking. A simplified public display may group records for readability, but the resolver preserves the underlying fields. A positive PD-V mark requires a documented search file or an equivalent public-domain assessment that identifies the applicable legal rule, territories, components, assessor, sources checked, evidence, and unresolved issues. A bare declaration is insufficient.
Record states and event history
Revocation is an event, not deletion. A record's current state is separate from its historical events. Event types include Created, Amended, Corrected, Challenged, Reviewed, Suspended, Reactivated, Revoked, Ratified, Superseded, Replaced, Withdrawn, Expired, and Invalidated. "Amended" records a change; "Reactivated" records a transition back to Active. Neither is a permanent current state. A mark may be presented as currently operative only while the resolver shows Active.
| Canonical current state | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Draft | Record started; not yet public. |
| Active | Current record satisfies applicable requirements. |
| Under review | Correction or update is being assessed. |
| Challenged | A party disputes the record; the claim and challenge are shown. |
| Suspended | Reliance is paused pending resolution. |
| Wind-down | A defined sell-through or transition period may apply. |
| Revoked | Underlying basis withdrawn or found invalid. |
| Ratified | A higher-tier authority confirmed the record under a defined process. |
| Superseded | Replaced by a newer record for the same work. |
| Replaced | Reissued as a different PRA-ID with a link between records. |
| Withdrawn | Recording party removed the record; history remains. |
| Expired | Stated term ended without renewal. |
| Invalidated | Record found non-conformant or fraudulent. |
Implementation conformance and record authority
These are separate dimensions. Do not use "Official PRA," "PRA-certified," "PRA-approved," or "PRA-cleared" without a genuine, named certification process and published criteria.
| Implementation conformance | Meaning |
|---|---|
| PRA-compatible | Uses one or more PRA concepts without meeting the full specification. |
| PRA-conformant | Meets the published minimum fields, identifier rules, human- and machine-readable representations, status-history requirements, correction procedure, and challenge mechanism. |
| PRA-reviewed | Independently assessed against the specification by a named reviewer or institution. |
| Record authority status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Self-declared | Published by the recording party without independent institutional review. |
| Institutionally reviewed | Reviewed by a named institution. |
| Authority-recorded | Linked to a government, court, statutory body, or other identified official record. |
| Authority-issued | The named authority itself issued the underlying licence or decision. |
Authority-recorded is not a conformance tier; it describes the authority relationship of a record, not whether an implementation meets the PRA specification.
Validity rules
- A mark is valid only while the register record is Active and the PRA-ID resolves.
- PD-V must name territories and components.
- COMP-X must list what is out.
- New typesetting stays with its owner.
- Every record states its evidence source, review status, authority status, and challenge status; a simplified display may group these for readability, but the resolver preserves the underlying fields.
See Governance for who may create and challenge a record, and Architecture for the minimum record fields and how these fields carry into future machine-verifiable implementations.
Proposed by W. A. Hasitha Supun Jayathilaka · see papers and about.