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
In the important case of West Pub. Co. _v._ Lawyers' Pub. Co., where a
collection of selected cases and a general digest were alleged to be
infringements of the plaintiff's reports and monthly digests, Judge Coxe
in the U. S. Circuit Court enjoined 303 proved "instances of piracy" but
not the remaining portions of the digest, but in 1897 the U. S. Circuit
Court of Appeals, through Judge Lacombe, held that under such
circumstances the burden of proof must be on the unfair user and
broadened the decision by issuing an injunction against the work as a
whole, excepting those parts which were public property. In 1910, in
Park & Pollard _v._ Kellerstrass, Judge Philips enjoined the whole work
because the infringing parts were not separable. In 1903, in Thompson
Co. _v._ American Law Book Co., where the editor of the defendant's law
encyclopaedia had made a list of cases cited in complainant's work, which
included material "pirated" by the complainant from copyright works, the
Circuit Court of Appeals, reversing the lower court, held through Judge
Coxe that there was no infringement, because the only use made of the
list was to guide the defendant to the reports and because the
complainant had no standing in equity. "If the defendant was guilty of
piracy, so was the complainant; and equity will not protect a pirate
from infringements of his piratical work." To like effect in Slingsby
_v._ Bradford Co., in 1905, Justice Warrington, in the Chancery
Division, held that the plaintiff could not recover against an evident
copying because his own catalogue was fraudulent in advertising as
patented articles not so protected, and a fraud will not be protected.
In the later case of West Pub. Co. _v_. Thompson Co., where the
publishers of the original reports and digests sought to restrain the
Thompson encyclopaedias, the Circuit Court of Appeals held that while a
compiler may use a copyright digest by making lists from which to run
down cases, which is "fair use," extensive copying or paraphrasing of
the language of the digest, whether to save literary work or mechanical
labor, constitutes an infringement. The case was sent back to the lower
court for rehearing and assessment of damages and was settled in 1911 by
an agreement involving transfer of the encyclopaedia to the plaintiff.
Reference to a copyright work giving pagination is not an infringement,
as was decided in 1909, in Banks Law Pub. Co. _v._ Lawyers Co-operative
Pub. Co., in the U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
{Sidenote: Quotation}
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account