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: Test of piracy}
"The true test of piracy," said Judge Shipman in the U. S. Circuit Court
in 1875, in Banks _v._ McDivitt, is "whether the defendant has in fact
used the plan, arrangements and illustrations as the model of his own
book, with colorable alterations and variations, or whether his work is
the result of his own labor, skill and use of common materials and
common sources." Judge Story said in 1841, in Folsom _v._ Marsh: "If so
much is taken that the value of the original is sensibly diminished, or
the labours of the original author are substantially, to an injurious
extent, appropriated by another, that is sufficient in point of law to
constitute a piracy _pro tanto_. The entirety of the copyright is the
property of the author and it is no defence that another person has
appropriated a part and not the whole of any property."
{Sidenote: Infringement in specific meaning}
Infringement is commonly taken to mean specific invasion of the author's
rights rather than wholesale piracy; and the question of what is
infringement or "literary larceny" is more often a question of the
interpretation of the facts than the construction of the statute. The
legal cases arising under infringement constitute a very large
proportion of copyright litigation, demanding as they do judicial
determination as to the acts complained of in each particular case. It
is therefore impossible in this volume to give citations or references
for the hundreds of cases recorded in the law reports or in the various
works on copyright, but it may be noted that the foot-note citations in
MacGillivray's "Law of copyright" cover a very large number of American
as well as English cases. No treatise on copyright can apply, however,
in advance, the general principles of copyright to the infinite variety
of possible cases; and only generalizations and a few illustrative cases
can here be given.
{Sidenote: Questions of fact and intent}
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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