Page:Copyright, Its History And Its Law (1912).djvu/306

 Springer, the Circuit Court in New York held, in 1901, that a replevin suit, involving prior demand, was not necessary and that the copyright statute itself gave authority for an action for seizure without previous demand, as would be necessary in replevin proceedings. It was held, however, in the Illinois circuit in an earlier case, that a suit of replevin will lie to enforce forfeiture under the copyright act. Several of these perplexities, however, are removed by the code of 1909, which expressly (sec. 27) authorizes the bringing together of all the remedies in one action.

That there can be no infringement of copyright by acts committed before the copyright was obtained, was decided in 1900 in the U. S. Circuit Court in the case of Maloney v. Foote, where the two parties were jointly engaged in preparing directories, and the plaintiff obtained the copyright and brought suit for infringement for the prior use of material, the question being of contract and not of copyright. On the other hand, as far as practicable, "it is the policy of the law to arrest the pirate before he actually makes off with the plunder," said Judge Coxe in the U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in Gannet v. Rupert, in 1904.

In 1903, in Champney v. Haag, it was held in the U. S. Circuit Court in Pennsylvania, that though a copy of a photograph of a copyright painting was an infringement, it was not the owner of the original copyright but the owner of the photograph who must sue—but this is contrary to the English ruling case of Lucas v. Williams, and is probably not good law.

A curious case arose in England in 1892 as to the rights of an author after publication and transfer of copyright, in Lee v. Gibbings, where the plaintiff had prepared for the defendant, a publisher, at an agreed price, an edition with introduction of Lord Herbert's autobiography, which the defendant re-issued in a