Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/392

Rh 362 COPYRIGHT interfered with. If any one wrongfully causes a book to be entered on the custom lists, any one injured thereby may apply to a judge in chambers to have the entry expunged. News- Newspapers stand at present on a somewhat peculiar papers. footing with reference to the law of copyright. Their posi tion was put in issue in the case of Cox v. the Land and Water Journal Company (Laio Jteports, 9 Eq. 324), in which the plaintiff sought to restrain the defendant from publishing a &quot; List of Hounds &quot; taken from plaintiff s paper the Field. It was argued that there was no copy right in a newspaper article, or, if there were, that it was lost by non-registration. Vice-Chancellor Malins held that a newspaper is not within the copyright Acts, that there fore the rules as to non-registration do not apply, and that the proprietor of a paper acquires such a property (not copyright) in every article for which he pays under the 18th section of the Act, or by the general rules of property, as will entitle him to prohibit any other person from publishing the same thing in any other newspaper. The substantial justice of this decision is beyond impeachment, but as a matter of law it is by no means satisfactory. The right to prohibit publication is copyright and nothing else ; and it is difficult to see how it can be enjoyed at all outside the Copyright Act, or how, if it is acquired in virtue of compliance with any of the provisions of the Act, it can avoid forfeiture as a penalty for non-registration. It is highly improbable that this decision would be confirmed, should the question ever come before a higher court. The property of a newspaper, i.e., the good-will of printing and publishing it, and the exclusive right to its title, are not rights of the same nature as copyright. Crown and A special kind of perpetual copyright in various publica- university tions has for various reasons been recognized by the law (1) copyrights. j n t ne Crown an( j (2) in the universities and colleges. The various copyright Acts, including the last, except from their provisions the copyrights vested in the two English and the four Scotch universities, Trinity College, Dublin, and tho colleges of Eton, Westminster, and Winchester. Crown copyrights are saved by the general principle which exempts Crown rights from the operation of statutes unless they are expressly mentioned. Among the books in which the Crown has claimed copyright are the English translation of the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, statutes, orders of Privy Council, proclamations, almanacs, Lilly s Latin Grammar, year books, and law reports. The copyright in the Bible is rested by some on the king s position as head of the church; Lord Lyndhurst rested it on his duties as the chief executive officer of the state charged with tho publication of authorized manuals of religion. The right of printing the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer is vested in the queen s printer and the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. These copyrights do not extend to prohibit independent translations from the original. Tho obsolete copyright of the Crown in Lilly s Latin Grammar was founded on the fact of its having been drawn up at the king s expense. The universities have a joint right (with the Crown s patentees) of printing Acts of Parliament. Law reports were decided to be the property of the Crown in the reign of Charles II. ; by Act of Parliament they were forbidden to bo published without licence from tho chancellor and the chiefs of the three courts, and this form of licence remained in use after the Act had expired. Tho courts still maintain their right to restrain the publication of reports of their proceedings, but on quite other grounds than those pertaining to the law of copyright. University and college copyrights are made perpetual by an Act of George III., but only on condition of the books being printed at their printing presses and for their own benefit. Rights of The rights of foreigners under the copyright Acts pro- . .iiviguej-.-s. duced an extraordinary conflict of judicial opinion in the English courts. A foreigner who during residence in the British dominions should publish a work was admitted to have a copyright therein. The question was whether residence at the time of publication was necessary. In Cocks v. Purday, the Court of Common Pleas held that it was not. In Boosey v. Davidson, the Court of Queen s Bench, following the decision of the Court of Common Pleas in Cocks v. Purday, held that a foreign author might have copyright in works first published in England, although he was abroad at the time of publication. But the Court of Exchequer, in Boosey v, Purday, refused to follow these decisions, holding that the legislature intended only to protect its own subjects, whether subjects by birth or by residence. The question came before the House of Lord?; on appeal in the case of Boosey v. Jeffreys, in which the Court of Exchequer had taken the same line. The judges having been consulted were found to be divided in opinion. Six of them held that a foreigner resident abroad might acquire copyright by publishing first in England. Fourmain- tained the contrary. The views of the minority were affirmed by the House of Lords (Lord Chancellor Cranworth and Lords Brougham and St Leonards). The lord chancellor s opinion was founded upon &quot; the general doctrine that a British senate would legislate for British subjects properly so called, or for such persons who might obtain that character for a time by being resident in this country, and therefore under allegiance to the Crown, and under the protection of the laws of England.&quot; Lord Brougham said that &quot;The statute of Anne had been passed for the purpose of encourag ing learned men, and with that view that Act had given them the exclusive right in their publications for twenty-one years. This, however, was clear, they had no copyright at common law, for if they had there would have been no necessity for the passing of that statute. It could scarcely be said that the legislature had decided a century and a half since that an Act was to be passed to create a monopoly in literary works solely for the benefit of foreigners. In the present case he was clearly of opinion that the copyright did not exist, and therefore that foreign law should not prevail over British law where there was such diversity between the two.&quot; Against the authority of this case, however, must be set the opinion of two of the greatest lawyers who have oc cupied the woolsack in this generation Lord Cairns and Lord Westbury. In the case of lloutledge v. Low (Law Reports, 3 House of Lords, 100) Lord Cairns said, &quot; The aim of the legislature is to increase the common stock of the literature of the country ; and if that stock can be increased by the publication for the first time here of a new and valuable work composed by an alien who has never been in the country, I see nothing in the wording of the Act which prevents, nothing in the policy of the Act which should prevent, and everything in the pro fessed object of the Act and in its wide and general provisions which should entitle such a person to the protection of the Act, in return and compensation for the addition he has made to the lite rature of the country.&quot; And Lord Westbury said, in the same case, &quot;The case of Jeffreys v. Boosey is a decision which is attached to and depends on the particular statute of which it was the exponent, and as that statute has been repealed and is now replaced by another Act, with different enactments expressed in different lan guage, the case of Jeffreys v. Boosey is not a binding authority in the exposition of this later statute. The Act appears to have been dictated by a wise and liberal spirit, and in the same spirit it should be interpreted, adhering of course to the settled rules of legal con struction. The preamble is, in my opinion, quite inconsistent with the conclusion that the protection given by the statute was intended to be confined to the works of British authors. The real condition of obtaining its advantages is the first publication by the author of his work in the United Kingdom. Kothing renders necessary his bodily presence here at the time, and I find it impossible to discover any reason why it should be required, or what it can add to the merit of the first publication. If the intrinsic merits of the reason ing on which Jeffreys v. Boosey was decided be considered, I must frankly admit that it by no means commands my assent.&quot; These conclusions appear to follow also from the recent Naturalization Act of 1870, which enacts that real and personal property of every description may be taken,