Page:Copyright, Its History And Its Law (1912).djvu/114

 Permission to use a copyrighted poem, for instance, in a specified collection does not grant a license to use it in other form, though it could be used in a combination of such collections. In 1896, in Gabriel v. McCabe, Judge Grosscup in the U.S. Circuit Court in Illinois held that the licensor could not prevent the use of a song licensed for a particular collection in a combination of this collection in another collection or in an abridged edition of the collection, though an "abridgment" involving a reprint of the song by itself would have been an unfair use of the license.

As to titles, which are not mentioned in the new code, both English and American court decisions are broadly and generally, though with some exceptions, to the effect that there is no copyright protection for the title of a book per se, but it may be considered an essential part of the book. Judge Shepley held, in 1872, in his elaborate discussion of the question of titles in Osgood v. Allen as to the periodical Our Young Folks, that "the right secured is the property in the literary composition — the product of the mind and genius of the author — and not in the name or title given to it. The title does not necessarily involve any literary composition; it may not be, and certainly the statute does not require that it should be, the product of the author's mind. . . . It is a mere appendage, which only identifies, and frequently does not in any way describe, the literary composition itself. ... If there were no piracy of the copyrighted book there would be no remedy . . . for the use of a title which could not be copyrighted independently of the book." Judge Lacombe accepted this view in his decision of the "Trilby" case, cited beyond.

Conversely, the publication of a copyrighted work under a changed title, with the original notice of copyright, would probably not invalidate the copyright.