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
Copyright in dramatic work can be obtained, as in the case of
encyclopaedic and like works, by the employment for hire of a dramatic
author, as was fully established in the case of Mallory _v._ Mackaye in
1898, by Judge Wheeler in the U. S. Circuit Court in New York, where
Mackaye had contracted for a salary of $5000, that all inventions and
plays by him within the ten years of the contract should belong to
Mallory, and was restricted accordingly from the independent production
of "Hazel Kirke."
{Sidenote: Copyright term}
The duration of copyright in dramatic and musical compositions is the
same as for books, in the United States (twenty-eight years with renewal
for twenty-eight years more), in Great Britain (under the new code life
and fifty years), in Australia (forty-two years or life and seven years,
as hitherto in Great Britain), and in Canada and Newfoundland
(twenty-eight years with renewal for fourteen years more),--as also in
most other countries, the new term for those in the International
Copyright Union which have accepted the convention of Berlin, being life
and fifty years. But in the case of a "dramatico-musical" work, where
the libretto and the music are by different authors, the respective
terms may end at different dates, as was held in 1905, and upheld in
1909, by the German courts as to the opera "Carmen" under the
Franco-German convention limiting copyright to thirty years after death.
Bizet, author of the music, had died in 1875, but one of the three
librettists was still living, on which facts the court held that the
musical score, but not the libretto, was free from copyright. Under the
new British and Canadian measures, which include the unusual provision
that the copyright term in a work of joint authorship shall be
determined by the first instead of the last death, the result would be
to the contrary effect.
{Sidenote: Registration}
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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