Clare Painter is a publishing rights and licensing expert with 30+ years’ experience in rights, licensing and associated contracts. She holds a Masters in UK, EU & US Copyright Law from King’s College London (2020 with Merit).
After rights and contracts roles at Mondadori in Milan, Italy and a co-edition publisher in Oxfordshire, she became Rights Director at Oxford-based Helicon Publishing, an innovative multi-platform publisher where she led a team licensing content to companies such as AOL, CompuServe, Microsoft, and Research Machines. Helicon won the Innovation Award at the British Book Awards 1996.
Clare turned independent in 2003 at a time when it was unusual for rights staff to work out of house. Despite this, her roster of clients grew quickly to encompass publishers, business schools, professional institutions, micro-businesses and corporates. She set up Clare Painter Associates Ltd in 2009.
Clare is an Associate of King’s College London (AKC) and fluent in Italian thanks to her years at Italy’s largest publisher.
More about Clare’s business and copyright activities
Clare Painter is a rights consultant and digital licensing agent with 30 years’ experience of publishing rights management and related agreements, encompassing rights sales, permissions clearances, research into copyright ownership, and licensing for institutional markets. She was awarded an MA in UK, EU and US Copyright Law from King’s College London in 2020.
Her company, Clare Painter Associates, provides consultancy specialising in digital rights and licensing. She acts as copyright and permissions consultant at Oxford University Press Journals. With leading Swiss business school IMD – International Institute for Management Development, she offers guidance on copyright management and permissions for e-learning. She is a member of the PLS Rights Management Group which is developing the PLS Rights and Licensing Hub, an initiative to encourage best practice in rights management. https://www.rightsandlicensing.co.uk/
In 2023, Clare worked alongside senior copyright academics to develop UKRI’s guidance on managing copyright under the UKRI Open Access policy for longform research publications. The team of 3 was led by Professor Emily Hudson (The Queen’s College, Oxford University) and Professor Tanya Aplin (King’s College London). Managing third-party copyright for research publications (UKRI, 2023) examines how to assess and manage copyright issues for materials used in OA monographs and edited collections, and includes practical permission strategies: https://www.ukri.org/publications/guidance-on-managing-copyright-under-ukri-open-access-policy/
Since 2017, Clare Painter Associates also encompasses a Digital Licensing Agency (previously Attwooll Associates) which Clare had worked closely with since its inception in 2003, and which had twice been awarded the Independent Publishers Guild ‘GBS Award for Services to Independent Publishers’, 2009 and 2011. The licensing agency guides academic and specialist publishers through negotiations to make their publications available to institutional markets worldwide. https://clarepainterassociates.com/cpa/licensing
Clare has provided clients with copyright guidelines and template permission documents for use in books, journals, case studies and teaching materials, covering figures, photographs, works of art, tables, quotations and video. These include guidelines for scholarly authors, explaining copyright principles and specific publisher policies, or for staff in non-publishing industries, for example a series of articles written for information professionals, describing how they can avoid legal, financial and reputational problems with their own and third-party copyright materials. https://www.jinfo.com/go/about/people/5388 (2014-2020, Jinfo paywall, but abstracts are visible)
In her copyright dissertation, Clare explored the burden on researchers which can be created in UK academic publishing by under-use of the fair dealing exceptions for criticism or review, and for quotation. She also looked ahead to consider the additional complexity which would arise for certain publications if required to publish under Open Access. https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/u2vja/
Working independently, Clare has worked with more than 70 publishers, industry bodies and other organisations including: Berghahn Books, Books Council of Wales, Bertoli Mitchell, Boydell & Brewer, British Library Publishing, The Case Centre, Emerald, Goodfellow Publishers, ICAEW, International Institute for Environment and Development, Jinfo, Publishing Training Centre, Taylor & Francis/Routledge, UCL Press, UKRI and UNESCO Publishing. www.clarepainterassociates.com/clients/
Clare is a regular exhibitor at Frankfurt and London Book Fairs, and a member of the Independent Publishers Guild. Previously, she was Rights Director at Helicon Publishing, a pioneering multi-platform publisher which won the Innovation in Publishing Award at The British Book Awards 1996.