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 publishing and bookselling business, brought in con- nection with Fust's heirs against Inkus of Frankfort for the infringement of property rights in certain books, and the issue of a preliminary injunction by a court at Basel, indicated some definite legal status.

The first recorded privilege in Germany was issued by the imperial Aulic Council in 150 1, to the Rhenish Celtic Sodalitas for the printing of dramas of the nun-poet, Hroswitha, who had been dead for 600 years, as prepared by Celtes of Nuremberg. The imperial privilege covered only the imperial domain, and Celtes in the same year obtained a similar privi-lege from the magistracy of Frankfort, then the seat of the book-fair, organized there about 1500, after- wards superseded by that at Leipzig. Later, imperial privileges were issued by the Imperial Chancellor in the nEmie of the Emperor, as one in 15 10 to the printer Johann Schott of the "Lectura aurea." In 1512 Maximilian I granted to the historiographer Johann Stab in Lintz a privilege covering "all works" which he "might cause to be printed," under which he issued licenses on particular books for ten years or less. This grant, however, some authorities consider not a privilege or copyright, but an author-ization to license, possibly similar to that which had been granted in 1455 by Frederick III and confirmed later by Maximilian I to Dr. Jacob Ossler at Stras-burg, perhaps the earliest centre of printing and bookselling, as imperial supervisor of literature and superintendent of printing. In 1512 also, copies or imitations or engravings by Albert Diirer, with forged signature, were ordered confiscated by the magistrates of Nuremberg, though perhaps on grounds of fraud rather than of copyright. But in 1528 Diirer's widow obtained from the Nuremberg authorities exclusive privilege for his works, and in