Page:Copyright, Its History And Its Law (1912).djvu/85

 in intellectual property as a natural and inherent right.

As to what constitutes publishing, interpretation by the courts based on previous law will in many respects be applicable to the new code. A book which has been sold or leased to subscribers on a contract of restricted use is none the less published, as was set forth in the opinion by Chief Judge Parker of the N. Y. Court of Appeals in Jewellers' Mercantile Agency v. Jewellers' Weekly Pub. Co. in 1898, and in the opinion by Judge Putnam of the U. S. Circuit Court in Massachusetts in Ladd v. Oxnard in 1896, both having reference to credit-rating books leased to subscribers for their individual use.

Publication depends upon sale or offer to the public, and it is a question whether the sale or offer of a copyrightable work, as the proceedings or publications of a society, to the members of that society only, constitutes publication, to be passed upon by the courts in view of the specific facts. A work "privately printed" or with the imprint "printed but not published," given or even sold by the author to his friends, and not sold generally by his authority, would probably not be held to be published; but the courts would probably hold that the sale of a work, though" privately printed," to merely nominal members of a nominal society, made up of the purchasers of the work, would constitute publication and, if without copyright notice, dedication.

As to the right to copy, this word in the broad sense as interpreted by the courts, covers the duplicating or multiplying of copies within the stated scope of the statute. It was argued in the mechanical music cases that the word copy extends to any form or method of duplication by which the thought of the author can be recorded or conveyed, but, as more fully stated in