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
Abridgments were construed by early English decisions not to be
infringements, and this precedent was followed, reluctantly and often
with protest, in later cases by English and American judges, as set
forth in the chapter on subject-matter. Later copyright provisions,--as
by use of the word "_retranchements_" in the Berne-Berlin conventions,
and the specific authorization in the American code "to make any other
version thereof," and for copyright of an abridgment of a work in the
public domain,--directly or by implication, make abridgment an
infringement and free the courts to take this view. Compilations also
constitute infringement if they extract substantial parts of a copyright
work, beyond the limits of "fair use," or even if they adopt the plan or
arrangement or bodily transfer the material of a copyright compilation
of non-copyright matter.
{Sidenote: Abridged compilations}
A curious complaint of infringement by abridgment was made in Gabriel
_v._ McCabe, in 1896, before Judge Grosscup in the U. S. Circuit Court
in Illinois, where the plaintiff had licensed the use of a copyright
song, "When the roll is called up yonder," in a collection of religious
poetry, "The finest of the wheat, no. 2," published by the defendant,
who included the song also in an abridged edition of this collection and
in a combined edition of this and another collection. Judge Grosscup
held that: "Future editions of a book may contain a composition
published in an earlier edition by license, even though parts of the
earlier edition are omitted.... To hold otherwise would practically
forbid any new editions of books of compilations, for the consent of all
the authors contributing could not, in many instances, be obtained." But
if the collection had been so abridged as to result in the publication
of the song alone as sheet music, it would have been an unfair use under
the license.
{Sidenote: Separation of infringing parts}
The general principles as to quotation beyond "fair use" were well laid
down by Lord Chancellor Eldon, in the early English case of Mawman _v._
Tegg, in 1826: "If the parts which have been copied cannot be separated
from those which are original, without destroying the use and value of
the original matter, he who has made an improper use of that which did
not belong to him must suffer the consequences of so doing. If a man
mixes what belongs to him with what belongs to me, and the mixture be
forbidden by law, he must again separate them, and he must bear all the
mischief and loss which the separation may occasion. If an individual
chooses in any work to mix my literary matter with his own, he must be
restrained from publishing the literary matter which belongs to me; and
if the parts of the work cannot be separated, and if by that means the
injunction, which restrained the publication of my literary matter,
prevents also the publication of his own literary matter, he has only
himself to blame."
{Sidenote: Law digests}
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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