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
Subdivision third of that section 23, says: "In the case of a dramatic
or musical composition not less than $100 for the first and not less
than $50 for every subsequent infringing performance."
I submit, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, that we are also liable to that
penalty as well as the $10 a roll, because these very astute gentlemen
who are back of this bill, on the very first infringement will claim
that any performance on an automatic piano player whereby Mr. Sousa's
march or Mr. Herbert's composition is played on a pianola or one of
the independent pianos, is a musical performance, and that for the
first performance, in addition to the $10 a roll, we are liable to be
fined $100, and for each subsequent performance $50. I think that this
section, if the other provisions of the bill are to remain in, should
be amended so as to say that this shall not include a performance on a
perforated music roll or on phonograph or music machine disks.
Some other extraordinary provisions of the penalties are, first, this
subdivision C of the fourth paragraph of section 23 provides that the
infringer is--
to deliver up on oath to be impounded during the pendency of the
action, upon such terms and conditions as the court may prescribe,
all goods alleged to infringe a copyright.
That is an extraordinary provision. They get an injunction pendente
lite, and not alone that, but we have to deliver up to them everything
pendente lite. The injunction is not good enough, and we have to give
the goods to them.
Next, it says (subsection D):
To deliver up, on oath, for destruction all the infringing copies
or devices, as well as all plates, molds, matrices, or other means
for making such infringing copies.
It may be proper, as in the old act, to direct the infringer to deliver
up the copies or the plates from which they are made, but it is
absolutely revolutionary to direct that the machinery be delivered up,
because that machinery may be useful for perfectly legitimate purposes,
and yet it must be delivered up for destruction.
It also provides that all those results can be obtained in a single
action.
As to the jurisdiction of courts in suits of this kind, here is the
provision of the bill:
SEC. 32. That all actions arising under the copyright laws of the
United States shall be originally cognizable by the circuit courts
of the United States, the district court of any Territory, the
supreme court of the District of Columbia, the district courts of
Alaska, Hawaii, and Porto Rico, and the courts of first instance
of the Philippine Islands.
Actions arising under this act may be instituted in the district
of which the defendant is an inhabitant, or in the district where
the violation of any provision of this act has occurred.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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