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
Most of the cases arising as to ownership are, in fact, issues outside
of copyright law, as when in 1883 in Clemens _v._ Belford, in the U. S.
Circuit Court in Illinois, Samuel L. Clemens vainly sought to restrain
the use of his pen-name, "Mark Twain," in a collection of his
uncopyrighted papers, Judge Blodgett holding that whoever has a right to
publish has a right to state authorship, though an author can restrain
the publication over his name of things he did not write. The same
doctrine was upheld in 1910 in Ellis _v._ Hurst, where a publisher had
printed with the real name of the author some non-copyright books which
Edward S. Ellis had put forth under a pseudonym. Judge Greenbaum, in the
N. Y. Supreme Court, held that the law insuring right of privacy does
not prevent the use of a writer's name on a book undoubtedly of his
writing.
In 1908 Mr. Clemens sought in vain to prevent the use by others of his
pseudonym, "Mark Twain," by incorporating a company with this name,
planning thus to secure the exclusive use of the name for this
corporation and practically obtaining a continuing trade-mark protection
for it under this device. But that an author may protect a _nom de
plume_ of settled use independent of copyright or trade-mark was held in
Landa v. Greenberg in 1908, in Chancery Division.
{Sidenote: Work in cyclopaedias}
When, as in the case of a cyclopaedia, many persons are employed at the
offices of an employer, using his materials and facilities, and
especially if on salary, the courts would undoubtedly uphold his full
proprietorship in their work. Where outside persons contribute special
articles, the presumption would probably be that the ownership of the
copyright, for that special publication, vested in the employer, but
that neither he, without the author's consent, nor the author, without
his consent, could publish the article in other competing shape. In
Bullen _v._ Aflalo, the House of Lords, in 1903, reversing the lower
courts, protected the proprietors of an encyclopaedia who had purchased
articles from authors, against reprints of the material elsewhere, by
the authors themselves, on the ground "that the right to obtain
copyright was intended to pass to the publisher, otherwise he would get
nothing from his bargain; and unless the publisher and proprietor of the
encyclopaedia stood in the shoes of the actual writer and was the
proprietor of the copyright, he would have nothing for his money,
because the articles might be published by others and he would have no
remedy, not having the copyright."
{Sidenote: Association of author's name}
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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