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 American law formerly named "the author, inventor, designer, or
proprietor of any work, and the executors, administrators, or assigns of
any such person" as the persons in whom copyright may lodge. The
Librarian of Congress accordingly issued copyright certificates for
books as to an "author" or "proprietor" only, assuming usually that an
editor was the "author" and a publisher the "proprietor," and never
going behind the claim set forth in the application. Under the new law
the applicant is designated only as the "claimant," and no such
distinction is made, except that the Copyright Office has an index card
for proprietor, as well as author, when another than the author makes
the application.
{Sidenote: The author primarily}
The author is the person primarily entitled to copyright. He may sell or
otherwise transfer his production before it is copyrighted, in which
case the new proprietor obtains all the common law rights of property,
both in the manuscript and its publication, including the right to
copyright. This common law right, including the right to copyright, may
extend, Drone argues, to the finder of an unpublished manuscript,
provided no one successfully disputes his ownership of his find, if the
manuscript be copyrightable; but there are no decisions on this point.
If a copyright is taken out by another person (as the publisher of the
book), it is done impliedly in trust for the author, as is a usual
custom among American publishers. The proprietor is defined to mean "the
representative of an artist or author who might himself obtain
copyright."
{Sidenote: Claimant's right to register}
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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