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
{Sidenote: English law and practice}
Under English law, on the contrary, the right of dramatization has not
been included under copyright; the mere copyrighting of a book could not
prevent its dramatization, but the copyrighting of a work in dramatized
form before its publication as a novel practically prevented other
dramatization of the literary work in so far as the one drama was a
reproduction of the features of the other. As stated by Colles and Hardy
in their recent work (1906) on "Playright and copyright in all
countries," "a novel is not a dramatic piece, ready and fit for
representation on the stage. Consequently, the author of a novel has the
copyright in his book, but he has no playright according to English
law." The general principles were best stated in 1874 by Chief Justice
Cockburn in Toole _v._ Young, where Grattan's drama "Glory" was declared
not to be an infringement either of Hollingshead's novel "Not above his
business," on which it was confessedly founded, nor of the dramatic
version made under the title of "Shop" by Hollingshead himself, but
never printed or performed and therefore unpublished: "Two persons may
dramatize the same novel, for that is common property. It is true that a
writer cannot produce and represent a drama, which he has borrowed from
a drama written previously by another person; he would then be
representing the production of the first dramatist.... I wish to guard
myself against being supposed to lay down that, if a writer, while
dramatizing a novel, takes the incidents, characters, and dialogue of a
previous drama founded upon that novel, and reproduces what is in
substance identical with the previous drama, there might not be an
infringement of the right of the earlier dramatist if the later drama be
represented on the stage."
{Sidenote: The new British code}
The new British measure remedies this defect by specifically including
the sole rights to convert a novel or other non-dramatic work, or an
artistic work, into a dramatic work, by way of performance in public or
otherwise, and to convert a dramatic work into a novel or other
non-dramatic work.
{Sidenote: Infringement cases}
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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