In a copyright notice on "digital images, photographs and the internet" last updated in November 2015, the UK Intellectual Property Office stated that digital reproductions of public domain images are not protected by copyright, arguing that "according to the Court of Justice of the European Union which has effect in UK law, copyright can only subsist in subject matter that is original in the sense that it is the author's own "intellectual creation". Given this criterion, it seems unlikely that what is merely a retouched, digitised image of an older work can be considered as "original"."
