Page:Copyright, Its History And Its Law (1912).djvu/266

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234
COPYRIGHT

Unrestricted
exhibition
hazardous
Judge Colt, had held that the exhibition of Naujok's painting of St. Cecilia, in Berlin and Munich, without copyright notice on the original work, constituted publication and dedication, and therefore denied protection to photographic copies thereafter copyrighted and published.

Reservation
on sale
That the sale of the original work of art as a material object does not involve the transfer of the copyright is a direct application in the new American code of previous judicial decisions. In Werckmeister v. Springer Lith. Co., in 1894, where the defense contended that the purchaser of a painting was the person authorized to become the copyright proprietor, this contention was absolutely overruled, in the U. S. Circuit Court in New York, by Judge Townsend. But it may nevertheless be desirable to include in any contract of sale a specific reservation of copyright, especially in the case of works executed for public authorities or to be exhibited in a public place. In Dielman v. White, in 1900, Judge Lowell in the U. S. Circuit Court in Massachusetts declined to enjoin a photograph of certain mosaics by Dielman in the Library of Congress, the original cartoon for which as sent to Venice, as well as the mosaic work itself, bore copyright notice, on the ground that the correspondence with the government constituting the contract, did not clearly reserve to the artist the right to copyright and prevent copying, — though this decision may be questioned.

Publication
construed
The courts are disposed to limit the definition of publication to insure the fullest protection of an author's right. In Werckmeister z;. Springer Lith. Co. it was further held by Judge Townsend that the printing in an exhibition catalogue of a cut of a painting was for the information of patrons and was not publication. In the same case the defense contended that the sale of