Copyright: Its History and Its LawBowker, R. R. (Richard Rogers)
History
Copyright: Its History and Its Law
Bowker, R. R. (Richard Rogers)
Copyright -- History; Copyright -- United States -- History
Holland is the only country in Europe which requires that the deposit
copies shall be printed within the country and thus makes manufacture a
condition of copyright--an inheritance probably from the times when the
printer-publishers of the Protestant Netherlands were the only ones
printing the books barred in Catholic countries by the _index
expurgatorius_, and when deposit was naturally required from them. The
law covered the Dutch West Indies, and the precedent was followed in
Siam; and in the Transvaal and Orange State the Dutch law continued
after they had become English colonies. Otherwise than in these
countries, only the British dominions of Canada and Newfoundland and the
Commonwealth of Australia have manufacturing provisions. Canada made
such provision as to domestic copyright in 1886 and again in the act of
May 2, 1889, which last provides that a literary, scientific, musical or
artistic work shall, before or simultaneously with publication or
production elsewhere, be registered in the office of the Minister of
Agriculture, and be printed or published or produced in Canada within
one month after publication or production elsewhere. Newfoundland in its
statute of 1892, following our own of 1891, provided similarly that the
condition for obtaining copyright shall be that the literary, scientific
or artistic work shall be printed and published or produced in this
colony. Australia, under the new code of 1905, confines domestic
copyright to books (inclusive of drama) "printed from type set up in
Australia, or plates made therefrom, or from plates or negatives made in
Australia in cases where type is not necessarily used," and in an
artistic work to those "made in Australia."
{Sidenote: English patent proviso}
Unfortunately, the precedent of our copyright act of 1891 has since been
followed in England in the patent and designs act of 1907, which
provides (sec. 27) that a patent may be revoked after four years "on the
ground that the patented article or process is manufactured or carried
on exclusively or mainly outside the United Kingdom." Such a provision
had been a feature of the patent laws of Germany, Canada and other
countries, but it is new in British law and has evoked strong protest
from American patentees, notwithstanding that it is parallel with our
manufacturing provision with respect to copyrights.
XI
DRAMATIC AND MUSICAL COPYRIGHT, INCLUDING PLAYRIGHT
{Sidenote: Dramatists' and composers' rights}
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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