The law on maps
Map copyright: who owns a map, a survey layer and a database
A map can carry three separate rights at once: copyright in the drawing, a database right in the data behind it, and sometimes Crown copyright. Each runs for a different number of years.
A map is a protected work
The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act counts any map, chart or plan as a graphic work, and US law lists maps, globes and charts among pictorial and graphic works. UK copyright runs 70 years from the end of the year the author dies; a US work made for hire runs 95 years from first publication or 120 years from creation, whichever expires first.
Source: Map data ownership law
The database right
In the UK a geographic database can carry the database right, infringed by extracting or re-utilising a substantial part of its contents without consent, and it runs 15 years from the end of the year the database was completed, starting again from first publication if it is published within that time.
Source: Map data ownership law
Crown copyright and government maps
Crown copyright covers works made by officers or servants of the Crown and can last 125 years from the year a work was made. In the US, copyright protection is not available for any work of the federal government, so federal maps carry no US copyright.
Source: Map data ownership law
Data derived from Ordnance Survey
Ordnance Survey's public sector licence distinguishes raw OS data from OS derived data, and sets out who each may be shared with. A firm whose layers were built on OS mapping needs to know which side of that line its data sits.
Training on maps without a licence
UK law allows copying for computational analysis only for research for a non-commercial purpose, so a commercial AI developer still needs a licence from whoever owns the map.