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 respect to advertisements and advertising matter as such, the new
American code is silent, and court decisions, mostly English, have been
contradictory. In 1863 Vice-Chancellor Page Wood, in Hotten _v._ Arthur,
"found no difficulty" in deciding that a catalogue of old books was a
subject of copyright "notwithstanding that the catalogues were for the
purpose of advertising the plaintiffs' stock-in-trade, and were not in
themselves offered for sale"; but in 1872 Lord Romilly, in Cobbett _v._
Woodward, made an absolutely contrary decision, saying: "But at the
last, it comes round to this, that there is no copyright in an
advertisement. If you copy the advertisement of another, you do him no
wrong in doing so, unless you lead the public to believe that you sell
the articles of the person whose advertisement you copy." This last
decision was definitely overruled and in 1882, in Maple _v._ Junior Army
& Navy Stores, the English Court of Appeal, in protecting an advertising
catalogue consisting mostly of engravings of furniture, said through
Justice Jessel: "The case which has done all the mischief is Cobbett
_v._ Woodward.... I think that is not law. I am not aware that the use
to which a proprietor puts his book makes any difference in his rights."
In 1906, in Davis _v._ Benjamin, the Chancery Division held a sheet of
advertising illustrations with headlines and prices a book.
{Sidenote: Undistinctive advertising not protectable}
An advertisement _per se_ of an ordinary character, the courts may
decline to protect, either on behalf of the advertiser or of the
publisher of the periodical in which it appears; thus possibly ordinary
advertisements might be copied by another paper, to give an inflated
impression of its advertising patronage unless enjoined for intent to
deceive. On the other hand, characteristic advertisements, as those for
which department stores pay large sums to advertisement writers, could
doubtless be copyrighted to prevent their use by rival firms, though the
advertiser would scarcely be interested in preventing the wide diffusion
of his advertisement with his name by its gratuitous publication
elsewhere. Some street-car advertisements, however, bear copyright
notices. Whether the proprietor of a copyrighted periodical could
prevent the use of a copyrightable advertisement not protected by
specific copyright, in a rival newspaper, would be questionable, though
a publisher might be granted an injunction for the combination or
arrangement of copyrightable advertisements in his periodical. In 1892,
in Lamb _v._ Evans, Lord Justice Lindley, in the English Court of
Appeal, said: "I do not see myself the difficulty in the publisher's
having a copyright in a sheet of advertisements. I do see a difficulty
in his having a copyright in one advertisement, because, as Mr. Justice
Chitty pointed out, that might prevent the advertiser from republishing
his advertisements in another paper, which is absurd." An advertisement
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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