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
A copy of a copy is an infringement of the original work and
incidentally of the direct copy, unless the latter is published without
proper copyright notice by authority of the proprietor of copyright in
the original. This was held in 1892, in Lucas _v._ Williams, by the
Queen's Bench, where a photograph from an engraving was held an
infringement of the original painting; and the decision of Judge
McPherson in the U. S. Circuit Court in Pennsylvania non-suiting, in
Champney _v._ Haag, in 1903, the proprietor of a copyright painting
because the offending photograph infringed only the copyrighted
photograph from which it was directly taken, is not considered good law.
A photograph may infringe the copyright in statuary, as was held in
1907, in Bracken _v._ Rosenthal, in the U. S. Circuit Court.
{Sidenote: Alterations}
As to altered copies and alterations, there have been many judicial
decisions, the gist of which is that a copy is not less an infringement
because it alters details, provided there is copying of a substantial
part; that a copy in another medium not exactly reproducing the original
or a copy of it, is nevertheless an infringement; that a substantial
alteration, or adaptation of an existing work, may in itself be
copyrightable, but that slight alterations will not justify the
copyrighting of a work in the public domain; and that an artist has the
right to prevent alteration of his original work by a subsequent owner,
as involving damage to his professional reputation. Where a copyrighted
portrait of Lillian Russell was combined with a portrait of another
actress, the composite photograph was held to be a violation of the
copyright, in Springer Lith. Co. _v._ Falk, in 1894, by the U. S.
Circuit Court of Appeals, through Judge Lacombe. So in the English case
of Bolton _v._ London Exhibitions Co., in 1898, where a lithographer
copied the outline of a lion from a copyrighted photograph, and filled
in details from natural histories in making a circus poster, Justice
Mathew in the Queen's Bench Division held that there had been
reproduction of the photograph and that a work of art had been
"vulgarized unlawfully." Where certain etchings and engravings had been
copied by the Brooklyn Photogravure Co., omitting the tints, plate mark
and title, it was held in 1892, in Fishel _v._ Lueckel, by Judge
Townsend in the U. S. Circuit Court in New York that this was an
infringement; said Judge Townsend: "The appropriation of a part of the
work is no less an infringement than the appropriation of the whole,
provided 'the alleged infringing part contains any substantial
repetitions of any material parts which are original and distinctive."
And where a photograph of Julia Marlowe was reproduced in a lithograph,
with many points of dissimilarity, some of them because of difference in
process, it was held in Falk _v._ Donaldson Lith. Co., in 1893, by Judge
Townsend in the U. S. Circuit Court in New York, that the differences
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