published non-copyright piano arrangement, Judge Lowell, in the U. S. Circuit Court in Massachusetts, ruled against this as an infringement of the unpublished work on common law grounds—but this decision has not been considered good law.
Dramatic
work by
employeeCopyright in dramatic work can be obtained, as in the case of encyclopaedic and like works, by the employment for hire of a dramatic author, as was fully established in the case of Mallory v. Mackaye in 1898, by Judge Wheeler in the U. S. Circuit Court in New York, where Mackaye had contracted for a salary of $5000, that all inventions and plays by him within the ten years of the contract should belong to Mallory, and was restricted accordingly from the independent production of "Hazel Kirke."
Copyright termThe duration of copyright in dramatic and musical compositions is the same as for books, in the United States (twenty-eight years with renewal for twentyeight years more), in Great Britain (under the new code life and fifty years), in Australia (fortytwo years or life and seven years, as hitherto in Great Britain), and in Canada and Newfoundland (twentyeight years with renewal for fourteen years more), — as also in most other countries, the new term for those in the International Copyright Union which have accepted the convention of Berlin, being life and fifty years. But in the case of a "dramaticomusical" work, where the libretto and the music are by different authors, the respective terms may end at different dates, as was held in 1905, and upheld in 1909, by the German courts as to the opera "Carmen" under the Franco-German convention limiting copyright to thirty years after death. Bizet, author of the music, had died in 1875, but one of the three librettists was still living, on which facts the court held that the musical score, but not the libretto, was free from
