Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 5.djvu/744

 732 FEDERAL REPORTER. �question is -whether, if that is substantially in good faith complied with, it is not suffioient. It seems to me that it is. �It may be admitted, therefore, that every person who claims a copyright to a book, conferred by act of congress, must show that the provisions of the act have been complied with. But there is what may be called the original right of the author. It is the object of the act of congress to "secure" the right which thus primarily exists. Indeed, statutes of copy- right seem to imply the existence of a natural right of the author to the product of his brain. They are passed in order to make that right after publication, in the language of the constitution, "exclusive." So that I am not inclined to agree with the strict construction which has been placed on the acts of congress by some of the courts. It seems to me, on the contrary, that these varions provisions of law in relation to copyright should have a liberal construction, in order to give eiiect to what may be considered the inherent right of the author to his own work. �It will be recollected that a maj'ority of the Judges, when the question first came before the court of King's Bench in England as to the right to literary property, held it existed at common law, independent of the statute of Anne ; and thia ruling was reversed by the house of lords, that court holding the right existed only by virtue of the statute ; and that this opinion of the highest appellate court of England was fol- lowed by the supreme court of the United States in the case of Wheaton v. Peters. But it may be affirmed with some con- fidence that the decisions of both courts were considered by text writers and the profession as rather trenching upon the inherent rights of authors. �There are other objections to the copyright, as that the name of Myers is alone used in the entry, and the title filed with the clerk does not show the name of the publisher. But these do not appear to be sustained in law or fact. �In considering the question of the infringement of the copy- right by the defendants, it must be borne in mind what is the character of the work. They are reports of the decisions of the supreme court of this state, to which no one can have a ����