Copyright Act, liUl.
��5(2).
��Application to existing works.
��Saving of collective work and contribution^ thereto.
��Jive years after his death, the residue after the expii'a- tion of that period is unassignable {h) .
The proviso in sect. 3, which entitles any person after the expiration of twenty-live years after the author's, death to reproduce a Avork on payment of a 10 per cent, royalty, mitigates the severity of this proviso as against the publisher who has reproduced the work under a con- tract with the author. Unfortunately, the former proviso does not, it would seem, apply to photographs, records, &c.. The omission of records is not serious, but the omission of photographs may operate harshly when a publisher has jDurchased photographs for the purpose of reproduc- tion, as illustrations in a book. If the copyright in such photograj)hs is still subsisting, and reverts to the author's representatives twenty-five years after his death, the pub- lisher will have to make a new contract if he desires to continue to reproduce them.
Sub-sect. (2) of sect. 5, including the proviso, appears to be equally applicable to existing works which acquire copyright, under sect. 24, a-s to works created after the commencement of the Act. If at the passing of the Act the author of such a work has not assigned his copyright,, he cannot thereafter assign it so as to divest his personal representatives of the reversionary interest which will pass to them on the lapse of twenty -five years after the author's death. Here again, the proviso to sect. 3 does not seem to give the assignee the full relief to which he is entitled. A work in which copyright subsists at the passing of the Act does not come under the royalty proviso until thirty years after the death of the author. In such Avorks, there- fore, an assignee from the author cannot get an assign- ment which will entitle him to continue the reproduction of the work without interruption. There is a break of five years during which the copyright becomes re-vested in the author's personal representatives without any cor- responding relief under sect. 3.
It would have been a great hardship to the proprietors of collective works, particularly those of a more perma- nent nature, such as encyclopaedias, if they could not have acquired from the author of a contribution an unfettered
��{h) The "author" of such works may, however, he a body corporate (sects. 19 (1), 21), and where that is so thisproviso is clearly inapplicable, and the full term of copyright may be assigned.
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