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 1888-1890 George Munro, publisher of the "Old sleuth" detective
series, sought in actions against several defendants to protect the use
of the name "Sleuth" and was upheld in the N. Y. Supreme Court in
separate decisions by Judges Andrews, O'Brien, and Patterson, while in
one of the cases Judge Ingraham held that "sleuth" was a dictionary word
and could not be protected; in 1889 the N. Y. Court of Appeals through
Chief Judge Parker decided that the name "Sleuth" was protectable, and
in 1890 Judge Macomber of the N. Y. Supreme Court held that "Sleuth" was
properly a subject of trade-mark. But in 1890 also, Judge Shipman in the
U. S. District Court dismissed the complaint in another Munro case, as
to an illustration picturing "Old Sleuth," on the ground that though of
the same subject it was not of the same character. These cases
illustrate the difficulty of decisions in this borderland of equity.
{Sidenote: Other title decisions}
In 1894 Judge Green, in the U. S. Circuit Court in New Jersey, in Social
Register Association _v._ Howard, protected on grounds of equity the
title "Social register" as descriptive of a social directory covering
Orange, N. J., and enjoined the use of "Howard's Social register" as
unfair competition. In 1887 the Harper house, as publishers of the
_Franklin Square Library_, obtained from the U. S. Circuit Court,
through Judge Waite, an injunction against the Franklin Square Library
Company for violation of their trade-mark rights in the name.
{Sidenote: Rebound copies}
Where the American Book Co. brought suit against Doan & Hanson, who had
restored and rebound used copies of school books, the U. S. Circuit
Court of Appeals held in 1901 that there was no violation of law, but
required notice that the books were second-hand copies by conspicuous
stamp on the cover. In 1891 the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, in Dodd _v._
Smith, declined to grant Dodd, Mead & Co. an injunction against
rebinders who had purchased from them sheets of a fifty-cent
paper-covered edition of a novel by E. P. Roe and bound these in cloth
to sell at sixty cents in competition with the plaintiff's $1.50 cloth
edition.
{Sidenote: The Kipling case}
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