Arguments before the Committee on Patents of the House of Representatives, conjointly with the Senate Committee on Patents, on H.R. 19853, to amend and consolidate the acts respecting copyright: June 6, 7, 8, and 9, 1906.United States. Congress. House. Committee on Patents
History
Arguments before the Committee on Patents of the House of Representatives, conjointly with the Senate Committee on Patents, on H.R. 19853, to amend and consolidate the acts respecting copyright: June 6, 7, 8, and 9, 1906.
United States. Congress. House. Committee on Patents
Copyright -- United States
The present statute (secs. 4965 and 4966) specifies certain acts which
are to be deemed an infringement. The bill, having defined the right of
the copyright proprietor as the exclusive right to do certain things,
defines an infringement to consist in the doing or causing to be done
without his consent of any of those things, the right to do or
authorize which is exclusively reserved to him. It contents itself with
this, adding only the one specification that "any reproduction,"
without his consent, "of any work or material part of any work in which
[his] copyright is subsisting," shall be an infringement.
So as to the person who may obtain copyright: The present statute
mentions the "author, inventor, designer, or proprietor," and elsewhere
the "originator." The bill rests with the term used in the
Constitution, "author," adding only "proprietor," which is not merely
in the existing statutes, but has been construed in a series of
judicial decisions.
Copyright consists of the exclusive right within a defined period to do
certain things with certain subject-matter and to prevent other people
from doing these things. The fundamental provisions of the copyright
law are therefore these four:
What is the subject-matter?
What are the acts?
How may the exclusive right to do them be secured?
And who may secure it?
Upon the third point, "How may the right be secured?" the bill modifies
substantially the existing requirements of law. These make deposit and
registration in the copyright office a condition precedent. They
require the deposit to be at least coincident with the publication, and
they stipulate that failure to comply precisely with this requirement
shall avoid the copyright ab initio.
The bill, in section 9, initiates the copyright from the date of the
publication of the work, with the notice of copyright affixed. So, in
effect, does the present law initiate the copyright from that date,
provided the deposit and registration be effected then; but by the bill
the publication with notice not merely initiates the copyright, it
"secures" it. That is the expression used in the bill.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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