One of the common misconceptions about the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible is that it is a universally public domain work—something many tout as a feature of its superiority to modern copyrighted translations. But most don’t realize that it is still under a special perpetual copyright of the Crown in the United Kingdom.
Unlike the KJV, some modern translations such as the Berean Standard Bible are public domain worldwide. So while it’s important for a Bible translation to be in the public domain, there are modern translations that fulfill that better than the KJV does.
When the KJV was completed, special printing rights were given to the King’s Printer, ensuring that only authorized printers could publish it within England and later the United Kingdom. The legal mechanism that established this in 1611 was the Royal Printing Privilege, granted by King James I. The Crown copyright over the KJV has continued in some form to the present day in the UK. It is managed by Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and Collins under letters patent, which means these publishers have the exclusive rights to print and distribute the KJV in the UK.[1] Additionally, modern editions or versions of the KJV outside of the UK that include editorial work, notes, or formatting may be copyrighted as derivative works.[2]
To be clear, the KJV has been treated as public domain in most countries outside the UK for many years due to international standards regarding the age of the work, but something can only truly be considered to be public domain if it is public domain in the country of origin. This makes the KJV an outlier in the world of intellectual property.
The Crown does not attempt to enforce its perpetual copyright over the KJV in foreign countries primarily due to legal, practical, and political reasons. Crown copyright is a unique feature of British law. It is tied to the authority of the British monarchy and does not extend beyond UK jurisdiction. Most other countries do not recognize such perpetual privileges for government works, and foreign copyright laws typically have explicit time limits for works to enter the public domain.
If the Crown wanted to enforce its perpetual copyright abroad, it would face significant legal hurdles. International copyright enforcement relies on treaties like the Berne Convention, which standardizes certain copyright protections but does not recognize Crown copyright or perpetual copyrights specific to one country. Attempting to enforce such a claim in a country where the KJV is already in the public domain would likely result in dismissal by the courts.
Terms of Use
The Cambridge website describes the legal restrictions on the KJV in the UK as follows:
Rights in The Authorized Version of the Bible (King James Bible) in the United Kingdom are vested in the Crown and administered by the Crown’s patentee, Cambridge University Press. The reproduction by any means of the text of the King James Version is permitted to a maximum of five hundred (500) verses for liturgical and non-commercial educational use, provided that the verses quoted neither amount to a complete book of the Bible nor represent 25 per cent or more of the total text of the work in which they are quoted, subject to the following acknowledgement being included:
Scripture quotations from The Authorized (King James) Version. Rights in the Authorized Version in the United Kingdom are vested in the Crown. Reproduced by permission of the Crown’s patentee, Cambridge University Press
When quotations from the KJV text are used in materials not being made available for sale, such as church bulletins, orders of service, posters, presentation materials, or similar media, a complete copyright notice is not required but the initials KJV must appear at the end of the quotation.
Rights or permission requests (including but not limited to reproduction in commercial publications) that exceed the above guidelines must be directed to the Permissions Department, Cambridge University Press, University Printing House, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS, UK (https://www.cambridge.org/about-us/rights-permissions) and approved in writing.[3]
History
At the beginning, by design, monopolies were established over the printing of the KJV in the United Kingdom. For approximately two centuries, the Oxford and Cambridge university presses, along with the King’s Printer in England, maintained exclusive rights to print it. This privilege, known as the “Bible privilege,” was not initially a matter of copyright but rather a monopoly granted by royal authority, as the first copyright law did not even exist until the 18th century. The primary justification for this monopoly was to ensure the accuracy of the biblical text and to keep prices affordable. However, over time, these monopolies were criticized for leading to high prices, limited availability of copies, and less textual accuracy.
In the 19th century, campaigns emerged to challenge these monopolies, particularly in Scotland, where the monopoly was more stringent. Activists argued that the monopolies hindered the widespread and affordable distribution of the Bible. By the end of the 1830s, the patent granting a monopoly to the King’s Printer for Scotland was not renewed, effectively ending the monopoly there. Despite similar campaigns in England and Wales, the monopolies persisted for another decade.[4]
The Biblical Contradiction
Although the KJV is in the public domain in most countries, this status arises not from any spirit of generosity or devotion to freely sharing the Word of God, but in spite of historical and ongoing attempts to control it. From its inception, the KJV has been tightly managed under the Crown’s perpetual copyright in the United Kingdom. This system of monopolistic control, driven by the Crown’s desire to regulate who could print and profit from the Bible, stands in stark contrast to the spirit of the gospel and the very definition of what a Bible is—God’s Word, not man’s.
This fixation on control is not unique to the history of the KJV. Modern Christian publishing is fraught with efforts to profit from and restrict access to Scripture[5], ignoring Jesus’ command in Matthew 10:8: “Freely you have received; freely give.”
So please join us in confronting the Bible market, which treats God’s Word as a commodity to bind and monetize. For more on this topic, see this article on the history of the KJV, check out copy.church and read The Dorean Principle.
For more information see these articles on Crown copyright and the King James Version ↩︎
For example, The New Cambridge Paragraph Bible, edited by David Norton and published by Cambridge University Press in 2005, presents the KJV text in paragraph format with modernized spelling and punctuation. Also, see The King James Study Bible, Full Color Edition, published by Thomas Nelson, which features thousands of study notes, archaeological information, special articles, in-text maps, and annotations. ↩︎
See our article Bible Publishers: Stewards or Gatekeepers? ↩︎