Page:The copyright act, 1911, annotated.djvu/131

 Special Provisions as to certain Works. 11^

standard of measurement has led to a somewhat involved § 16.

provision for dealing with the question of the periods —

during which copyright should be unassignable by the author, or during which the public should have the right to reproduce the work on a royalty basis (g). It is only reasonable that during the life of the surviving author the work should in no case fall into the public domain either whoU}- or in part, and therefore wherever a speci- fied number of years from the death of the author who dies first elapses during the lifetime of the author who dies last, that period is prolonged until the death of the sur- vivor. This in effect is the simple result of the clause, although attained by a somewhat unnecessary circuity of expression.

There is nothing in the Act which defines the nature of Nature of the respective interests of each of two or more joint •i°|'^* authors' authors. Two questions arise — (1) whether they take as joinrwork. joint tenants or tenants in common; (2) whether they take equal shares, or how otherwise. It has been argued that joint authors take as joint tenants Avith a right of survivorship (h). Joint tenancy, however, is a relation- ship which invariably arises from a grant or assignment of property. Thus, co-patentees take as joint tenants under the grant contained in the letters patent (^), and in the absence of express direction the beneficiaries en- titled to a settlement policy under the Married Women's Property Acts take as joint tenants (k). The property of joint authors in their joint work does not, however, arise from anything in the nature of a grant or assign- ment of property. The copyright vests under the statute by operation of law, and it is submitted that the princi- ples relating to commixtio of goods applies, and that the authors take as tenants in common (/). In Lauri v. Renad {m), Kekewich, J., stated that joint authors were tenants in common; but he professed to rely solely on the authority of Powell v. Head(n), which does not in fact decide the point. In Poivell v. Head the persons who

(9) Sects. 3, Proviso ; 5 (2) Proviso.

(h) Marzialy. Gibbons (1874), L. R. 9 Ch. 518.

(i) Terrell on Patents, 5th e'd. p. 192.

(A-) Dm-ies' FoJicy Trust, [1892] 1 Ch. 91.

(l) Burkleii V. Gross (1863), 3 B. & S. 566.

(w) [1S92J 3 Ch. 402, 412.

('») (1879), 12 Ch. D. 686.

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