Page:The copyright act, 1911, annotated.djvu/28

16 infringed ; was there an intention to appropriate, or was the appropriation casual and inadvertent.

Similarly, in the case of paintings and other works of art, it is an infringement to copy any substantial part of the work or the design thereof. It is not an infringement when nothing is taken but that which is trivial and unimportant.

The taking of a general scheme or idea is not an infringement either of a literary or artistic work where such scheme or idea is applied and worked out independently by the author of the second work from his own materials.

By the definition clause, "performance" means any acoustic representation of a work and any visual representation of any dramatic action in a work including such a representation made by means of any mechanical instrument.

These words are intended to bring under protection all forms of user which are transitory and fleeting and do not consist in the making of any permanent record of the work. Performing right is no longer confined to dramatic and musical works, but is extended to all classes of works protected by the Act, so that wherever any original element in a work can be turned to profit by some form of transitory representation, the exclusive right of making such use of the work is primâ facie vested in the author as part of his copyright. The exclusive right of representing a work in some transitory form is, however, and almost necessarily so, confined to public representation. Performances of dramatic or musical works,