Page:The copyright act, 1911, annotated.djvu/148

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136
Copyright Act, 1911.

§21.

on one side for possible use in the future. When any, photograph is published in tho paper, a fee is paid upon an agreed scale. It has been held that, in the absence of express terms, the proper inference is that, when a print is sent, the sending of it constitutes an offer to permit that photograph to be reproduced for the agreed fee. The offer is one that can be withdrawn at any time before acceptance, and therefore the photographer may, at any time before a photograph has actually been inserted in the make up for a particular issue, withdraw his permission, and prohibit all further reproduction of his photographs. The fact that the proprietor of the paper has made a block does not entitle him to say that he has accepted the photographer's offer, and may therefore reproduce the photograph at any future time on payment of the agreed fee. Sometimes a lower scale of charges is agreed for a second or subsequent reproduction of the same photograph, but even that does not give the proprietor of the paper who has reproduced the photograph once, and has the block in his possession, an irrevocable licence to reproduce it a second time[1]. It is clear that if a photograph is submitted for reproduction in one paper, the proprietor of the paper cannot reproduce it in another paper without the photographer's express consent[2].

Provisions as to designs registrable under 7 Edw. 7. c. 29.22.—(1) This Act shall not apply to designs capable of being registered under the Patents and Designs Act, 1907, except designs which, though capable of being so registered, are not used or intended to be used as models or patterns to be multiplied by any industrial process.

(2) General rules under section eighty-six of the Patents and Designs Act, 1907, may be made for determining the conditions under which a design shall be deemed to be used for such purposes as aforesaid.

  1. Bowden Bros. v. Amalqamated Pictorials, Ltd., [1911] 1 Ch. 386.
  2. Nicholls v. Parker (1901), 17 T. L. E. 482.