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
That is wrong, because it gives him two recoveries; and in patent cases
the courts have established for more than a quarter of a century that
the patentee is entitled to a recovery of profits or damages, whichever
he prefers, but is not entitled to recover both. No proposition has
ever been made, in any statute, to give anybody a double recovery until
it is made here; and here he is told that he shall have both. And what
is worse, down at the bottom there of the subsection, if it turns out
that there were no damages inflicted and no profits made, then the
provision is that the judge shall fix the damages at such a sum as he
finds to be just; and then, after the judge is told to exercise his
discretion to fix a just sum, he is told that that sum must not be less
than $250.
On page 18, among the evils and misfortunes that are to be inflicted
upon the unwitting infringer as well as the willful infringer, is the
following. He must--
deliver up on oath, to be impounded during the pendency of action,
upon such terms and conditions as the court may prescribe, all
goods alleged to infringe a copyright.
So that if anybody wants to drive his competitor out of business, all
he has to do is to file a bill alleging that the competing goods
infringe, and he does not even have to swear to that; and then, in
pursuance of that bill, all the property of that alleged infringer is
impounded during the course of the litigation. And it would be a very
dull complainant that could not keep the litigation going at least five
years, and to that extent eliminate competition.
The next one is wickeder still. The infringer must--
deliver up on oath for destruction all the infringing copies or
devices, etc.
Here is a case of an unwitting infringer. He is found to infringe. He
thought he did not infringe. Good lawyers told him he did not. The
court finally found that he did, and there, among the penalties, all
his goods must be delivered up for destruction. Now, that is entirely
wrong. The courts have decided in patent cases that under precisely
those circumstances the defendant has a right to export his goods and
sell them in foreign countries; and there is no ethical and no legal
reason why an unwitting infringer of a copyright, after having been
found to infringe in this country, should not export his goods and sell
them elsewhere. And the circuit court of appeals for the second circuit
has unanimously decided, in patent cases, that that is perfectly right.
Mr. WEBB. Not only the copyrighted goods, but the machines themselves.
Mr. WALKER. I will come to the other point--certainly; and he must not
only have those destroyed, but the "plates, molds, matrices, or other
means of making such infringing copies."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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