reasonable protection within such possession, may issue an Order in Council declaring that so long as such Act or ordinance continues in force within such colony, the prohibitions contained in any Acts of Parliament against the importing, selling, letting out to hire, exposing for sale or hire, or possessing foreign reprints of books first composed, written, printed, or published in the United Kingdom, and entitled to copyright therein, shall be suspended as far as regards such colony.(a) The last statutory enactment on the subject of international copyright is 15 & 16 Vict. c. 12, which extends and explains the previous Acts, besides enabling Her Majesty to carry into effect a convention with France on the subject. Under this Act the Queen may, by Order in Council, direct that the authors of books published after a specified day in any foreign country, their executors, administrators, or assigns, shall be empowered (subject to the provisions contained in the Act) to prevent the publication in the British dominions of any translations of such books not authorised by them for a period, to be specified in the Order of Council, not exceeding five years from the first publication of an authorised translation, and in the case of books published in parts, for a period not exceeding, as to each part, five years from the first publication of an authorised translation of that part. On such order being made the provisions in the laws which protect British copyright are to be applied to prevent the publication of unauthorised translations. Similar provisions are made to prevent unauthorised translations for the same length of time of dramatic works first publicly represented in any foreign country. Fair imitations and adaptations to the English stage of dramatic pieces are excepted from the operation of the statute; also all articles of a political nature, in foreign newspapers or periodicals, and similar articles on other subjects where the author has not notified his intention to reserve the right.(b) The requisites which foreign authors must comply with in order to entitle themselves to the benefits of this act are specified, and provisions are inserted to prevent the importation of pirated copies. (c) Lastly, the Act clears up a previously existing doubt as to prints taken by lithography, by applying to them the provisions contained in the different statutes relating to other prints and engravings. (d) (a) See the chapter on "Colonial Copyright," post. (4) Sect. 7. PART L. The legislature came in the last place to the aid of anthors of paintings, drawings, and photographs. In CHAPTER VI. 1858 Lord Lyndhurst presented a petition to the House of Lords from the Society of Arts, the Royal Institute of British Architects, and a number of sculptors, painters, photographers, and others, asking for an extension of the law of copyright to works of fine art. A committee was appointed and a report presented, and a Bill was introduced to give effect to the report. A dissolution of Parliament, however, delayed the matter for a while, but in 1862 the Act drawings, and 25 & 26 Vict. c. 68, was passed to accomplish the prayer of 25 & 26 Viet c. 68. the petition. Previously to that statute the authors of Paintings, paintings, drawings, and photographs had no copyright in photographs. their works. (a) The statute confers on the author of every original painting, drawing, and photograph, and his assigns, the sole and exclusive right of copying, engraving, reproducing, and multiplying it and the design thereof for the term of the natural life of the author, and seven years after his death. Provisions are contained in the Act as to registry and assignment, and to prohibit the importation of pirated works; and for infringement of the copyright conferred by the Act, a penalty is imposed of 10l. for each offence, besides a forfeiture of all copies. The foregoing is but a rapid summary of the legislative enactments on the subject of copyright, in their chronological order. The chief provisions of the various Acts will be considered in detail when treating in succeeding chapters of the different subjects in which copyright exists. CHAPTER VII. COPYRIGHT IN BOOKS. THE Act of 5 & 6 Vict. c. 45, s. 2, defines "copyright " to Definition of mean the sole and exclusive liberty of printing or otherwise copyright, multiplying (b) copies of any subject to which the said word is in the Act applied. ** book." The same section provides that the word "book" shall Meaning of be construed to mean and include every volume, part or (a) See the preamble to this statute. (b) This gives a wider meaning to the term than that given by the Statute of Anne, which was "the sole right and liberty of printing," and thus protects literary works from unauthorised publication by other means than the press: (see per Talfourd, J., Novello v. Sudlow (12 C. B. 189; 16 Jur. 671). PART L. division of a volume, pamphlet, sheet of letter-press, (a) sheet CHAPTER VII. of music, map, chart, or plan separately published. (b) Duration of copyright. Copyright in before the Act. A newspaper is not, according to Malins, V.C., (c) a book within this section, and does not require to be registered under sect. 13, in order to entitle the proprietor to restrain the piracy of it. With respect to the duration of copyright in books, sect. 3 enacts "that the copyright in every book which shall after the passing of this Act be published in the lifetime of its author shall endure for the natural life of such author, and for the further term of seven years, commencing at the time of his death, and shall be the property of such author and his assigns: provided always, that if the said term of seven years shall expire before the end of forty-two years from the first publication of such book, the copyright shall in that case endure for such period of forty-two years; and that the copyright in every book which shall be published after the death of its author shall endure for the term of fortytwo years from the first publication thereof, and shall be the property of the proprietor of the author's manuscript from which such book shall be first published, and his assigns.' In the case of books published before the passing of the books published Act (1st July, 1842), and in which copyright then subsisted, sect. 4 enacts, "that the copyright which at the time of passing this Act shall subsist in any book theretofore published (except as hereinafter mentioned) shall be extended and endure for the full term provided by this Act in cases of books thereafter published, and shall be the property of the person who at the time of passing of this Act shall be the proprietor of such copyright: Provided always, that in all cases in which such copyright shall belong in whole or in part to a publisher or other person who shall have acquired it for other consideration than that of natural love and affection, such copyright shall not be extended by this Act, but shall endure for the term which shall subsist therein at the time of passing of this Act, and no longer, unless the author of such book, if he shall be living, or the personal representative of such author, if he shall be dead, and the proprietor of such copyright shall, before the expiration of such term, consent and agree to accept the (a) A label used in the sale of any article is said by an American Judge (M Clean) not to be a book within the provisions of the Copyright Act: (Coffeen v. Brunton, 4 M'Clean, 516.) (b) See Hime v. Dale (2 Camp. 27 n.); Clementi v. Goulding (2 Camp. 25); Back v. Longman (Cowp. 623). (c) Cox v. Land and Water Journal Company (L. Rep. 9 Eq. 324; 21 L. T. N. S. 548.) benefits of this Act in respect of such book, and shall cause PART L a minute of such consent in the form in that behalf given in CHAPTER VII the schedule to this Act annexed to be entered in the book of registry hereinafter directed to be kept, in which case such copyright shall endure for the full term by this Act provided in cases of books to be published after the passing of this Act, and shall be the property of such person or persons as in such minute shall be expressed." The copyright, then, in every book published during the author's lifetime is to last, at least, for forty-two years from the time of its first publication, and may last for any longer period that may be covered by the duration of the author's life, with seven more years added. If the book is published after his death, the copyright lasts for forty-two years from first publication. Copyrights subsisting at the time of the passing of the Act are extended to the same limits, but not in the case of assignees of the copyright for other consideration than that of natural love and affection, unless with the concurrence of the proprietor and author or his personal representative. Though the Act gives a meaning to the word "book," which includes dramatic and musical compositions, besides reviews, serials, &c., we shall treat in this chapter only of books commonly so called, and reserve for a separate treatment the most important of the other productions which the word is used in the Act to include. author. With respect to the question whether there must be a Whether there known author by whose life and from whose death the must be a known statutory period of copyright is to be determined, the observations of Lord Deas in the Scotch case of Maclean V. Moody, (a) in the year 1858, are deserving of attention. In that case an argument was addressed to the court against the title of the claimants to copyright in a shipping list called "The Clyde Bill of Entry," to the following effect;-that the object of the statute 5 & 6 Vict. c. 45, Was to encourage literary merit; that intellectual labour constituting authorship is alone thereby protected; that there can be no authorship without an author; that the claimants were not the authors in the present case, nor did they name the authors; that the life of the author affords the only criterion the statute gives for measuring the endurance of the privilege; and that without the statutory means of measuring the privilege, the privilege itself cannot exist. Lord Deas said, "I am humbly of opinion that this argument, although ingenious, is unsound. The (a) Cases in Court of Sessions, vol. 20, p. 1163. PART I. Act does not confine the privilege to works of literary CHAPTER VII. merit. . . . . Neither does the Act confine the privilege to cases in which there is a known author, whose life shall afford a measure for the endurance of the privilege. A person may find a manuscript in his ancestor's repositories, or get a gift of it and publish it, and he may be entitled to copyright, although he cannot tell who was the author, or whether the author is living or dead. The Crown might, I presume, get up a publication and be entitled to copyright, and yet the Crown never dies. . . . . That the first publisher may have copyright in the work, although he cannot point out the author, appears to me implied in sect. 16 of the statute, which requires the defendant if the nature of his defence be that the plaintiff in such action was not the author or first publisher of the book' to give notice of the name of the person whom he alleges to have been the author or first publisher.' I think it is here assumed that there may be cases in which, if the plaintiff be the first publisher' he may be entitled to copyright, although no author has been or can be named upon either side. In all such cases it is obvious that the endurance of the privilege can have no reference to the author's life, but must be for forty-two years after the first publication." Author. An author may be described as one who, by his own intellectual labour applied to the materials of his composition, produces an arrangement or compilation new in itself. (a) Where the incidents of a person's life were furnished by him to another who prepared them for publication, and the copyright was taken out in the name of the person furnishing the facts, it was held in America that he was not the author, and that a person claiming as his assignee could not maintain an action for infringement. (b) Assistants employed by the publishers of a shipping list compiled from statistics contained in custom house books to which the publisher had sole right of access for the purpose of publication, were said by Lord Deas (c) not to be authors in the sense of sect. 18 of 5 & 6 Vict. c. 45, nor in any reasonable sense whatever. The person who arranges a pianoforte score of an opera is the author or composer of such arrangement, and must be registered as such.(đ) (a) Atwill v. Ferrett (2 Blatch. 46). (b) De Witt v. Brooks (cited Law's American Digest of Patent and Copyright Cases, p. 174). (c) Maclean v. Moody (20 Scotch Sess. Cas. 2nd Ser. 1164.) |