Page:Copyright, Its History And Its Law (1912).djvu/304

 responsibility for the act of his agent. In a suit to obtain damages based on forfeiture, in Wheeler v. Cobbey, in 1895, Judge Shiras in the U. S. Circuit Court in Nebraska sustained a demurrer on the ground that the damages asked for depended on forfeiture and could not be obtained unless the actual forfeiture was had within the statutory limit of two years. In Morrison v. Pettibone, in 1897, in the U. S. Circuit Court in Illinois, Judge Seaman held that certain sheets, seized during the process of lithographing, when only one color had been printed, were not exact copies and therefore could not be forfeited. In Bennett v. Boston Traveler Co., in 1900, the Circuit Court of Appeals, through Judge Colt, refused relief because the plaintiff had alleged infringement of a cartoon published in the New York Herald, which was not specifically copyrighted, instead of alleging infringement of the copyrighted newspaper of which it was a part. An extreme case was that of Child v. N. Y. Times Co., in 1901, where the plaintiff had purchased infringing copies from the defendant, in which case Judge Hazel in the U. S. Circuit Court in New York held that as these were not literally "found in possession" of defendant, a penalty could not be collected. Several of these cases illustrate escapes from justice which will not be possible under the code of 1909, which uses broader phraseology. In Walker v. Globe Newspaper Co., in 1908, where no copies of a pirated map were found in possession of the defendants, the U. S. Supreme Court held that outside of statutory remedies no suit for damages could be maintained.

On the other hand, in the case of Brady v. Daly, which came before the U. S. Supreme Court in 1899, the defendants, on a question of jurisdiction, raised the issue that the old law provided for a penalty and