286
COPYRIGHT
Innocent importation
Books not
claiming
copyright
Periodicals may be im- ported
Composite books not admitted
ditions be neglected. It follows that in the case of books so copyrighted and manufactured, any other edition must be prohibited importation.
An English decision holds that an importer is not innocent because he does not know that an importa- tion includes copyright matter; and the wording of our law implies the same, though an American de- cision held that a partner or employer is not charge- able with statute penalties for acts done without his knowledge by a partner or agent.
An indirect and significant effect of the manufac- turing proviso, in the nature of a "boomerang" to American industries, is to prevent the copyrighting of works which might otherwise be partly manufac- tured in America. Thus the American versions of the Book of Common Prayer and of Church Hymnals no longer seek American copyright, because the thin paper editions, as on "Oxford paper," are necessarily printed abroad and could not be imported if there were copyright on other editions which might be made in America. Baedeker's "United States," though dealing exclusively with and chiefly sold in this country, is not copyrighted, being protected rather by the cost of reproducing its German-made maps and text, and by its repute as a guide-book and characteristic form, which might under the doctrine of "fair use" give its American publishers some com- mon law protection against imitators.
The code of 1909 permits the importation of peri- odicals containing copyright matter authorized by the copyright proprietor, though not manufactured in the United States, but this permissive exception does not extend to composite books; and under the law of 1 89 1 the Treasury Department held that in the case of a book of poems, some of which were copyrighted in the United States, the book could not be imported
