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
The statutes of foreign countries are in general of similar scope,
though with variations of extent and phraseology in the several
countries. The broadest seems to be that of Siam, above cited,
translating common law rights into statutory privilege, though that
country also contradictorily limits copyright in books by a
manufacturing clause. Spain specifically protects works produced or
published by "any kind of impression or reproduction known now or
subsequently invented," as elsewhere quoted. France specifically gives
an author right to assign his property in whole or in part--a right
which is probably included in other countries under the general
construction of statutory rights in property.
{Sidenote: International provisions}
The international copyright convention, as modified at Berlin, does not
define the scope of copyright, but insures for authors the enjoyment of
such rights as the domestic laws accord to natives; but in its several
articles it makes specific provision as to representation, translation,
adaptation, mechanical reproduction, etc., as set forth in the chapter
on international copyright conventions.
Common law, or a crude equivalent for it, as enforced by the courts,
seems to extend copyright protection, in the absence of specific
legislation, in Montenegro, Egypt and Liberia, Honduras, the Dominican
Republic, and Uruguay, as formerly in Argentina.
VI
SUBJECT-MATTER OF COPYRIGHT: WHAT MAY BE COPYRIGHTED
{Sidenote: Subject-matter in general}
The subject-matter of copyright should include, in the nature of things,
those products of invention, creations of the human brain, which are
realized and utilized immaterially through material records, and not, as
in the case of patents, materially through the material itself.
Copyrightable works, in brief, are those which appeal from the
imagination to the imagination, or in which intellectual labor combines
immaterial product into new form. What may be copyrighted specifically
and practically depends, under present conditions of law, upon the
statutory provisions, national or international, of the several nations
of the world.
{Sidenote: Classification}
The new American code gives the following classification of
copyrightable works:
"(Sec. 5.) That the application for registration shall specify to which
of the following classes the work in which copyright is claimed belongs:
"(a) Books, including composite and cyclopaedic works, directories,
gazetteers, and other compilations;
"(b) Periodicals, including newspapers;
"(c) Lectures, sermons, addresses, prepared for oral delivery;
"(d) Dramatic or dramatico-musical compositions;
"(e) Musical compositions;
"(f) Maps;
"(g) Works of art; models or designs for works of art;
"(h) Reproductions of a work of art;
"(i) Drawings or plastic works of a scientific or technical character;
"(j) Photographs;
"(k) Prints and pictorial illustrations:
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