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COPYRIGHT
work, as laid down by Lord Mansfield, no doubt has been abandoned. But the Copyright Act, 1842, has been liberally construed as to what is a literary work and what is original matter. It is now settled law that a newspaper is a book within the meaning of the Act, and can claim all rights that a book has under the Copyright Act. Thus, at the present time, leading articles, special articles, and even news items are protected. Current prices of stocks and shares, translations, the compilation of a directory, summaries of legal proceedings, and other similar literary work, so far as the literary form, the labour, and money are concerned, are equally protected. In short, the test may now be broadly stated to be, whether labour of the brain and expenditure of money have been given for the production ; whilst the old requirement of original matter is not strictly maintained, or, at any rate, is broadly interpreted. Thus, the St James’s Gazette was restrained from making extracts from a descriptive article by Rudyard Kipling in the Times, and the Pall Mall Gazette protected its cable reports of Australian cricket-matches. The latest leading case, however, on the subject is Walter v. Lane (decided in the House of Lords, 6th August 1900). The question raised was, whether or not copyright applied under the Act of 1842 in respect of verbatim reports of speeches. Four of the law lords, viz., the Lord Chancellor, Lord Davey, Lord James of Hereford, and Lord Brampton, upheld the claim to copyright in such cases, whilst Lord Robertson was the sole dissentient. The point of law was examined by each judge with great care; but the gist of their decision is to be found in the opening sentences of the judgment of the Lord Chancellor (Lord Halsbury), who said:—“My lords, I should very much regret if I were compelled to come to the conclusion that the state of the law permitted one man to make profit out of and to appropriate to himself the labour, skill, and capital of another. And it is not denied that in this case the defendant seeks to appropriate to himself the labour, skill, and capital of another. In the view I take of this case, I think the law is strong enough to restrain what to my mind would be a grievous injustice.” Apart from newspapers, protection has been extended to publications having no literary character; Messrs Maple’s furniture catalogue, and the Stock Exchange prices on the “ tape ” have been awarded the same protection as directories. On the other hand, it has been decided that there is no copyright in a title, though if a new title is so like one with an established reputation that it will mislead the public, it may be restrained, not on grounds of copyright, but as a use of a title akin to common-law fraud. The Sphere and Spear, titles of misleading similarity, assumed by two weekly periodicals that appeared almost simultaneously in London in 1900—the latter, however, being but short-lived—could not successfully attack each other, because neither had an established reputation when the title of the other was first adopted. The Courts have declined to protect works which are mere copies of railway time-tables, or the “tips” of a sporting prophet, or mechanical devices with no independent literary matter, such as patterns for cutting ladies’ sleeves. A committee of the House of Lords has considered proposals and heard evidence concerning various Bills for the amendment of the law of copyright, both literary and artistic. The general tendency of all the proposals is to increase the protection given to authors and artists, by lengthening the term of protection to thirty years after the death of the author, by increasing the amount of protection given (as by forbidding abridgments, dramatization of novels, and translations), and by increasing the efficacy of the remedies for infringement. Many difficult
questions, however, remain for consideration, especially in artistic copyright. Plays and Music.—The only decision of importance affecting the drama has been the “ Little Lord Fauntleroy ” case, in which the person who dramatized the novel of another without his consent, an operation up to that time believed to be unassailable in law, was attacked successfully, by preventing him from using printed or written copies of the play, either to deposit with the Lord Chamberlain or as prompt-books. In every case where much of the original dialogue of the novel is taken, this stops the production of the dramatization. In music, statutes of 1882 and 1888 have prevented the use of the provisions inflicting penalties for the performance of copyright songs for purposes of extortion, by allowing the Court to inflict a penalty of one farthing and make the plaintiff pay the costs, if justice requires it. Authors reserving the right of public performance are required to print a notice to that effect on all copies of the music. An important decision on musical copyright is the recent case in which it has been held that the reproduction of copyright tunes on perforated slips for an iEolian mechanical organ is not an infringement of the copyright in the tune. Artistic Copyright.—The most striking decisions have been those in the “ Living Picture ” cases (in which it was decided that tableaux vivants are not infringements of the copyright of the pictures from which they are taken), and a series of cases relating to photographs, which were not much in the contemplation of the framers of the Artistic Copyright Act of 1862. It has been decided that the “author” of a photograph is the person who groups and effectively superintends the picture, and not his employer, nor the sun, which has some claims to the title. The private sitter has restrained the photographer from exhibiting or selling the photographs for which he has been paid, but in several cases the celebrity who has sat to a photographer at his request and without payment, has not been allowed to distribute his photograph to newspapers for reproduction without the consent of the photographer. (See Artistic Copyright below.) Colonial Copyright.—The International Copyright Act, 1886, contains provisions designed to extend the benefit of the British Copyright Acts to works first produced in the colonies, while allowing each colony to legislate separately for works first produced within its own limit. The latter permission has been adopted by several of the colonies. The desire of Canadian printers to allow or require copyright wrorks to be reprinted or printed in Canada has given rise to a very difficult controversy. The colonies at present are all included in the system of international copyright established by the Bern Convention hereafter explained. International Copyright. — Until 1886 international copyright in Great Britain rested on a series of Orders in Council, made under the authority of the International Copyright Act, 1844, conferring on the authors of a particular foreign country the same rights in Great Britain as British authors, on condition of their registering their work in Great Britain within a year of first publication abroad. A condition of the granting of each order was that the Sovereign should be satisfied that reciprocal protection was given in the country in question to British authors. The Bern Convention.—As the result of conferences at Bern in 1885 and 1887, this system was simplified and made more general by the treaty known as “ The Bern Convention,” signed at Bern on 5th September 1887. The contracting parties were the British Empire, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Tunis, and Hayti. Luxemburg, Monaco, Norway, and Japan have since joined. Austria and Hungary have a separate con-
