Page:Copyright, Its History And Its Law (1912).djvu/479

 BUSINESS RELATIONS 447

not exercise rights beyond the second edition, nor could they assign their rights.

American publishers usually expect the author to Renewal make a contract for the entire copyright period, and *^"" to make application in their behalf for the renewal term. It is true that the very large percentage of books lose their value long before the close of the original term, and that the percentage where renewal is desirable is very small.

It was a thought to which "Mark Twain's" mind often recurred that a long copyright term was not de- sirable, because so few books were of value at the end of one or two decades, and he frequently put forward a scheme for extending copyright from period to pe- riod, based on the issuance of a cheap edition under the author's sanction. This scheme, which he pre- sented in some detail at the time of the Congressional copyright hearings, did not receive support from other students and advocates of copyright.

A contract giving publishers the "whole and exclu- License not sive right of publication," was decided /w re Clinical assignment Obstetrics by the Chancery Court, through Justice Warrington, in 1908, to be a personal contract and license, not an assignment of copyright, and the assignment entries were ordered to be expunged, in line with the decision in 1907 by the Court of Appeal in Re "The Liedertafel series" et al.

The publication of a book involves many indirect Author's and expenses, in addition to the direct cost of manufac- publisher's ture, such as the share of general office expenses, the ^^° large item of advertising and the like. These are diffi- cult to allot, and this helps to make the "half profits " system a fruitful occasion of disagreements. On this system or on the commission basis, the nature and proportion of these indirect charges should be clearly set forth in the publishing agreement. On a "half