Page:Copyright, Its History And Its Law (1912).djvu/417

 BRITISH EMPIRE 385

copyright law, subject to amendments since passed and approved. The Imperial and Canadian laws of 1875, taken together, make it possible to issue in Can- ada cheaper reprints of British copyright works, by arrangement with the author or copyright owner, without interfering with the more costly English edi- tions.

It should here be noted that the Canadian act of License acts 1889, as amended by the Canadian act of 1895, con- «iisallowed stituting Part II of chapter 70 of the Revised Statutes, 1906, has never been approved and brought into force by proclamation of the Governor-General. The act of 1889, following the Imperial international copy- right act of 1886, extended Canadian copyright on condition of registration with the Minister of Agri- culture, and printing and publication or production in Canada within one month after publication or pro- duction elsewhere, and provided that the Minister of Agriculture might grant licenses, not exclusive, for the production of works not thus protected on an un- dertaking to pay to the author ten per cent royalty on the retail price, in which case importation of for- eign-made (but not British) editions might be pro- hibited during the copyright period. The act of 1895 extended this license system to works which the copy- right proprietor failed to keep in print in Canada, un- less he should give satisfactory assurance of prompt re-issue. These acts, as noted, never became effect- ive.

In 1900 an amendment to the copyright act was The Fisher passed which is sometimes referred to as the Fisher »«*» ^900 act. It provides that if a book, as to which there is subsisting Canadian copyright under the copyright act, has first been published in any part of the Brit- ish dominions other than Canada, and the owner of the copyright has granted a license to reproduce in