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
This right of royalty should therefore not run to the proprietor
of the original copyright as such, but to the composer as such. If
the composer has sold his copyright the purchaser should not, by
virtue of that purchase, acquire any interest in the royalty of
the composer for the use of his name and the title of his music.
Of course the composer could sell this royalty right, and if he
chose to sell it with the copyright and to the same person he
could do so, but it should not pass without express mention. It
should not pass as incident or appertaining to the copyright.
Such a provision would be precisely like the provision in the
present statute with respect to translations. In the statute it is
now provided, not that the copyright includes the right of
translation, but that the author whose work has been copyrighted
has the exclusive right of translation. He may sell his copyright,
but such sale does not divest him of the monopoly of the
translation nor vest such monopoly of translation in the assignee
of his copyright.
NOTE.--This point is somewhat fully developed in brief of the
defendants in White-Smith Music Publishing Company _v._ Apollo,
copy of which brief is herewith furnished. (See p. 46 to 50,
inclusive.) The position above stated and presented in brief, as
above noted, was not controverted and was apparently fully
conceded as a legal proposition, by counsel for the complainants
in that suit. The ultimate propositions supported by the above
contention in that suit were contested upon other grounds. Copy of
complainants' brief upon this point will be furnished the
committee later, with citation to the particular paragraphs
sustaining the above statement.
Outside of and as an exception to the general class of musical
compositions to which the foregoing considerations are pertinent,
there is a class more closely related to automatic reproducing
devices and in respect to which the composer has a more vital
interest, viz:
Musical compositions not reproducible to the ear by a single human
performer upon any instrument, but which can be produced by means
of perforated rolls on an automatic instrument.
The staff notations of such compositions have practically no
market value, except in case they are arranged in the forms of
orchestral scores, so as to be produced by a plurality of
instruments simultaneously played by different performers. The
number of copies of such orchestral scores which will be required
is necessarily very limited, and the sale of such staff notations
offers a very limited field from which the composer may derive a
just compensation for his work. The only source of revenue to the
composer of such works is in the sale of the only means of playing
these, viz, the perforated rolls.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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