Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 20.djvu/360

346 supplement, issued a chromo-lithograph pattern for Berlin-wool work, embodying this picture. When sued, they said that they bought the pattern in Germany; they did not, however, dispute that it had been copied from the engraving, but claimed that copyright in an engraving only protects the proprietor from competition of engravings and other prints adapted to be sold and used as engravings are; that is, as works of art to please the eye. And the Court of Appeal so decided. The purpose of any kind of picture intended to be hung as an ornamental work of art, and that of a mere pattern to be used as a guide for an embroiderer or artisan, are so different that the pattern can not be called a copy of the picture, in the sense that it violates the copyright law.

Recent decisions have not been particularly favorable to maps and charts. In America the compiler of "insurance maps" devised a novel system of colors and signs, explained by a key, enabling a person to see at a glance the character of the buildings and other facts about the property important with reference to insuring it. He copyrighted these maps. An imitator prepared maps of Philadelphia on the same plan, and using like colors, signs, and key. The Supreme Court said that this was no infringement. A copyright gives the exclusive right of multiplying copies: to infringe it, a substantial copy of the whole or of a material part must be produced. Now, maps of Philadelphia can not possibly be deemed copies of maps of New York. Scarcely any map is published on which some arbitrary signs explained by a key are not used; but copyrighting the map does not secure an exclusive right to the signs and key for all other maps. A dealer in zinc paints contrived an advertising card bearing bits of paper painted in colors and serving to exhibit the hues of the paints sold by him; and this card he copyrighted as a chart. The judge said that it was not a chart, nor the subject of copyright; and that, if it were, a rival dealer's similar card using colored papers to show what paints were sold by him would not be an infringement, because it was not a copy of the information conveyed by the first card. A print-dealer contrived pattern-prints of balloons, hanging-baskets, etc., bearing printing as a guide for embroidery, and cutting lines, showing how the paper might be cut and joined to make the different parts fit together. The judge said that things of this nature are not the subject of copyright.

A recent decision in favor of a lecturer's right to control publication of addresses which he does not print but retains for repeated oral delivery, is narrated, in an article entitled "Medical Lectures and the Law of Copyright," in the "New York Medical Journal" for June last. Rumor says that the question is to be raised again in a suit by Colonel Ingersoll.

London and New York have each a "Coach-makers' Journal"; and the New York editor copied an article from the London paper. Thereupon the London publishers, finding that a news-agent there was