Page:Copyright, Its History And Its Law (1912).djvu/483

 BUSINESS RELATIONS 451

to adopt any one plan of marketing his wares would interfere with his freedom of choice and his natural return.

The reason that an author chooses one publisher Saving instead of many is the simple one that the original through cost of making and advertising a book is in this way pubulher reduced to one outlay instead of multiplied in many, and that this cost is minimized by being distributed over the largest possible edition. It is the practice of any successful publisher to plan for such an edition as will command the widest sale, and so distribute the original cost over as many copies as possible, and when a copyright book proves to be of such general demand that different styles of editions can be sold, such editions are in fact made by the same publisher. The compulsory license system would only protect the public against the unwisdom of publishers, whose mistakes are presently corrected by business failure or by the transfer of his books by the author to more enterprising houses.

Copyrights are specifically included, with patents Copyrights and trade-marks, in the bankruptcy acts as assets ^^^^.tk- which pass to the trustee, which applies to a bankrupt "*^ "^ author as well as to other copyright proprietors, but as previously stated, this does not include the personal contract for the publication of an unassigned work. This last doctrine was fully upheld in the English case of Griffith v. Tower Pub. Co. & Moncrieff, in 1897, by Justice Stirling, where the liquidator of a corporation was enjoined from transferring a copy- right direct to a publisher not acceptable to the author. A manuscript as such is a tangible asset in bankruptcy if of value in itself, but the right of the author to copyright or to publish his manuscript is a personal and not a property right, which therefore does not pass in case of bankruptcy, and a court would