Page:Copyright, Its History And Its Law (1912).djvu/135

 simultaneously by the New York Times and the London Times, but the difference of five hours enabled the correspondents of the New York Sun and World to cable the report to their respective papers in time for publication at the same hour in America as in the New York Times. Anticipating this course, the New York Times had taken the precaution to publish the report in pamphlet or " book" form some hours before newspaper publication, and to copyright this as a book. When an injunction was asked in the U. S. Circuit Court from Judge Hand, that judge granted the injunction, but on the required production of the contract in court, dissolved his injunction on the ground that the contract between Peary and the New York Times gave to the Times only the right to news publication and specifically reserved to Peary magazine and book rights. He inferred thus that the Times had no right to copyright the news report as a book, and was not the agent of the author for that purpose. To the contrary, Judge Grosscup in Chicago, in an exactly similar case against the Chicago Inter-Ocean and other Chicago papers, and with the contract before him, maintained the copyright by the Times. The two contradictory decisions have not so far been adjudicated in the higher courts. It will be observed that the question is not strictly one of copyright, but of contract, and that it is not denied that the news report, in the literary form given it by the author, was a proper subject of copyright, though the news of the discovery of the North Pole might not be copyrightable. Judge Hand perhaps erred in assuming that there could be separate copyright for news, magazine, or book publication, overlooking the fact that Peary had conferred on the Times authority to protect the report sent to it by cable, while reserving to himself rights