AS ONE who understood the myriad byways of authors’ copyright, Charles Clark was a rarity among publishers. But before he turned to the legal wrangles of the media, he had made his name with Penguin Books in the 1960s.

There his editorial mission was to popularise subjects hitherto restricted to the academic lists. Topical and often controversial books on education, law and psychology, bearing the famous Penguin imprint, found their way on to the market where they had a powerful impact on the political debate.

Later he took on the formidable task of reorganising Hutchinson, a revered but old- fashioned company, to meet the challenges of the mass market.

Having been superseded at Hutchinson after falling out with new owners, he reinvented himself as a copyright expert and adviser dedicated to ensuring that publishers and authors should agree on a fair distribution of revenue gained from the latest technology.

Born in 1933, Charles David Lawson Clark went from Edinburgh Academy via National Service with the Royal Horse Artillery to Jesus College, Oxford, where he read law. He was called to the Bar, Inner Temple, in 1960. But publishing proved more attractive than the courts.

His first job was as an editor with the legal publisher Sweet and Maxwell, where he met his wife, Fiona. Moving on to Penguin, he showed his continuing interest in the law with a succession of unlikely strong sellers such as Bill Wedderburn’s The Worker and the Law and Harry Street’s Freedom, the Individual and the Law.

Clark also led the way in commissioning The New Penguin Shakespeare, which adopted a simple format without the detailed footnotes favoured by literary critics. The same dedication to drawing in a younger generation easily deterred from so-called difficult subjects inspired the hugely ambitious Nuffield Science Project, which Clark initiated when, at 33, he became managing director of Penguin Education. Sponsored by the Nuffield Foundation, the project revolutionised the teaching of physics, chemistry and biology.

After his Hutchinson debacle, Clark had every intention of staying in publishing but not quite in the way it turned out. Having served with distinction on a Publishers’ Association committee charged with making recommendations to the Whitfield inquiry into the future of copyright, Clark was first choice to be the PA adviser on a highly contentious issue.

This was in the 1980s and the internet was still to come. But the advent of easily affordable photocopiers posed a threat to copyright that, in its day, was seen by some of the more hysterical spokesmen of the industry as the death knell of commercial publishing.

To this fractious debate Clark introduced informed opinion delivered in a measured tone that owed much to his legal background.

While Clark was retained by the collective body of publishers he never lost sight of the essential fact that it was authors who produced the raw material on which publishing depended. In any exploitation of copyright both elements of the business deserved to benefit on equal terms. The setting up of the Copyright Licensing Agency, jointly managed by publishers and authors to agree terms with educational and other institutions of fees for reproducing copyright works, owed much to Clark’s negotiating skills.

His reputation having travelled abroad, he found himself alongside EU and US copyright consultants in framing proposals for updating copyright law to news forms of reproduction.

In addition to the PA, Clark became copyright adviser to many other trade bodies ranging from the Federation of European Publishers to the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers. His book, Publishing Agreements, now in its sixth edition, quickly established itself as the bible of good contractual practice.

While a severe heart attack in 1991 forced him to cut back on his activities at a time when the internet was beginning to make its influence felt, he continued to exercise a calming and constructive influence, arguing that control of copyright was achievable as long as publishers and authors stopped acting as Luddites and, instead, worked with the internet to devise secure payments.

Clark’s active life outside publishing included leading the fundraising for the mental charity Mind, of which he subsequently became chairman.

Beyond his family, Clark’s passion was for music, German lieder in particular. A talented singer, he might have had a quite different career if he had accepted, as he nearly did, an offer to join the Cologne Opera Chorus.

Clark is survived by his wife, Fiona, a son and three daughters.

Charles Clark, publisher and copyright expert, was born on June 12, 1933. He died on October 6, 2006, aged 73.