Canadian Currency Is Copyrighted; What About Canadian Stamps

So today I learnt that the Royal Mint has copyrights on Canadian currency http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/...-on-cd-cover

I was wondering if the same is true for Canadian stamps?

Since the Royal Mint or Canada Post are federal institutions wouldn't materials they produce be public domain? Does this mean that companies like Scott catalogue have to pay licensing fees to use images of Canadian stamps?

What about elsewhere in the world?

I think the USPS has copyrighted their stamps since around 1980.

Here is an interesting page that has been discussed before:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/C...ublic_domain

I wouldn't rely on it for making use of images, but for general discussion purposes...

For anyone that doesn't want to follow a link, the site says that Canadian stamps are subject to a crown copyright.

As for USPS, the Post Office claims a copyright from 1978, on.

I think most stamp catalogues, auction sites, etc., get away with it under this provision which is contained within the Canada Post website:

Also, that copyright reverts to the public domain after 50 years. I would have to guess, however, that it does not supersede anybody else's copyright. So, when Canada's Olympic stamps are more than 50 years old, the IOC's copyright on the 5 rings logo will still be in force. Same with the Winnie the Pooh souvenir sheet, and any number of other issues.

But the Bluenose is fair game! That's one of my long-term projects - write some software to aid in converting scans to CNC machine code and then machine my own engraved copy in a hang-it-on-the-wall size.

Ryan

The US Postal Service has a similar restriction on the reproduction of stamps for "philatelic use", but naturally their policy has to be a lot more complicated, but here's the text right out of the USPS Postal Operations Manual: