Pall Mall Gazette having made a humble submission and apology, the Vice-Chancellor thought it sufficient for the purposes of justice to order him to pay the costs of the motion. A similar order was made with respect to the printer of another paper which had gone beyond a mere insertion of the article from the Pall Mall Gazette, and the motions against the other papers were abandoned. (a) PART I. CHAPTER IV. Scotch univer leges of Eton, and Winchester. By 15 Geo. 3, c. 53, the Universities of Oxford and Copyright of Cambridge, the four universities in Scotland, and the English and colleges of Eton, Westminster, and Winchester have sities, and colgranted to them for ever the sole liberty of printing and Westminster, reprinting at their respective presses, all such books as had been before the year 1775, or should thereafter at any time "be bequeathed or otherwise given by the author or authors of the same respectively, or the representatives of such author or authors, to or in trust for the said universities, or to or in trust for any college or house of learning within the same, or to or in trust for the said four universities in Scotland, or to or in trust for the said colleges of Eton, Westminster, and Winchester, or any of them, for the purposes mentioned,(b) unless the same should have been bequeathed or given, or should thereafter be bequeathed or given, for any term of years, or other limited term." (c) Copyright is given only so long as the books or copies. belonging to the universities or colleges are printed at their own printing presses within. the said universities or colleges respectively, and for their sole benefit and advantage. If they delegate, grant, lease, or sell their copyrights or exclusive rights of printing the books or any part thereof, or allow, permit, or authorise any person or persons or body corporate to print or reprint the same, then the privileges granted by the Act are to become void and of no effect. They may, however, sell such copies so bequeathed or given in like manner as any author or authors may do.(d) In order that the penalties for piracy may be enforced, it Registration. is necessary that every book be entered in the register book at Stationers' Hall within two months after the bequest or gift of it shall have come to the knowledge of the vicechancellors of the said universities, or heads of houses and colleges of learning, or of the principal of any of the said four universities respectively. The register book (a) See further on this subject, the chapter on "Libellous Contempts of Courts of Justice," post, and the cases cited there. (b) i.e., "for the advancement of learning, and other beneficial purposes of education within the said universities and colleges." (c) Sect. 1. (d) Sect. 3. PART L CHAPTER IV. Piracy. Trinity College, may be inspected without fee, and the clerk is to give a certificate of any entry on payment of a fee not exceeding sixpence. (a) If the clerk refuse to make entry or give certificates of entries, the university or college which owns the copyright (notice being first given of such refusal by an advertisement in the Gazette) is to have the like benefit as if such entry or certificates had been duly made and given, and the clerk who refuses is for every offence to forfeit £20 to the proprietors of the copyright.(b) If any one prints, reprints, or imports, or causes to be printed, reprinted, or imported, any such book or books, or, knowing the same to be so printed or reprinted, sells, publishes, or exposes to sale, or causes to be sold, published, or exposed to sale, any such book or books, he is to forfeit the books and every sheet of them, to the proprietor of the copyright, and one penny for every sheet found in his custody either printed or printing, published or exposed to sale contrary to the true intent and meaning of the Act, one half to go to the Crown, the other half to the prosecutor. (c) The Act of 41 Geo. 8, c. 107, s. 3, confers on Trinity College, Dublin, a similar copyright and under similar conditions in all books given or bequeathed to it. 5 & 6 Vict. c. 45, which (s. 1) repeals the Act of 41 Geo. 3, c. 107, provides (s. 27) that nothing contained therein shall affect or alter the rights of the two universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the colleges or houses of learning within the same, the four universities in Scotland, Trinity College, Dublin, and the several colleges of Eton, Westminster, and Winchester, in any copyrights theretofore vested or thereafter to be vested in them. Unpublished manuscripts. CHAPTER V. PROPERTY IN UNPUBLISHED WORKS. IT has already been stated that every new, and it should (a) Sect. 4. unpublished take the shape of written manuscripts of literary, dramatic, or musical compositions, or whether they are the designs for works of ornament or utility planned by the mind of an artist, they are equally inviolable while they remain unpublished, and the author possesses an absolute right to publish them or not as he thinks fit, and (if he does not desire to publish them) to hinder their publication either in whole or in part by any one else. "It is certain every man has a right to keep his own sentiments if he pleases. He has certainly a right to judge whether he will make them public or commit them only to the sight of his friends; in that state a manuscript is in every sense his peculiar property, and no man can take it from him, or make any use of it which he has not authorised, without being guilty of a violation of his property. And as every author or proprietor of a manuscript has a right to determine whether he will publish it or not, he has a right to the first publication, and whoever deprives him of that privilege is guilty of a manifest wrong, and the court have a right to stop it."(a) The ideas of an author have been quaintly compared to "birds in a cage, which none but he can have a right to let fly, for till he thinks proper to emancipate them they are under his own dominion."(b) "The property," says Lord Cottenham, (c) "of an author or composer of any work, whether of literature, art, or science, in such work unpublished, and kept for his private use or pleasure, cannot be disputed after the many decisions in which that proposition has been affirmed or assumed. I say 'assumed,' because in most of the cases which have been decided, the question was not as to the original right of the author, but whether what had taken place did not amount to a waiver of such right. If then such right and property exist (a) Per Yates, J. (4 Burr. 2378). (b) Ib. (c) Prince Albert v. Strange (13 Jur. 112; 1 Mac. & G. 42; 18 L. J. 126, Ch.); see Bartlett v. Crittenden (4 M'Clean, 301); Hoyt v. M'Kenzie (3 Barb. Ch. 323); Wheaton v. Peters (8 Pet. 657). "No length of time, where the invention does not go into public use, can invalidate the right of the inventor. He may take his own time to perfect his discovery, and apply for a patent. And the same principle applies to the manuscript of an author. If he permit copies to be taken for the gratification of his friends, he does not authorise those friends to print them for general use. This is the author's right, from which arise the high motive of pecuniary profit and literary reputation. When the inventor consents to the construction and use of his machine he yields the whole value of his invention. But an author's manuscripts are very different from a machine. As manuscripts, in modern times, they are not and cannot be of general use: (M‘Lean, J., Bartlett v. Crittenden, ubi supra.) E PART I. CHAPTER V. PART I. CHAPTER V. This property is independent of statute. Prince Albert v. in the author of such works, it must so exist exclusively of all other persons." For this exclusive property in the unpublished products of his mental labours the author, it must be remembered, is not indebted to any Copyright Acts. His right is independent of statute, and, as observed by Lord Cottenham in the judgment from which the preceding extract is taken, depends entirely on the common law right of property. To the same effect Knight Bruce, V.C., on the final hearing of Prince Albert v. Strange, (a) in the court below, remarks— "Upon the principle, therefore, of protecting property it is that the common law, in cases not aided nor prejudiced by statute, shelters the privacy and seclusion of thoughts and sentiments committed to writing, and desired by the author to remain not generally known. . . . . Such then being, as I believe, the nature and foundation of the common law as to manuscripts, independently of Parliamentary additions and subtractions, its operation cannot of necessity be confined to literary subjects. That would be to limit the rule by its example. Wherever the produce of labour is liable to invasion in an analogous manner, there must, I suppose, be a title to analogous protection or redress." The protection afforded by the common law to unpublished compositions cannot be evaded by translation, abridgment, summary, or even review. (b) How complete the right of the author is to prevent every, even the slightest infringement of the property in his unpublished productions is forcibly shown by the facts of the case in which the preceding opinions have been judicially expressed a case which is in fact the leading one on the subject now treated of. In Prince Albert v. Strange (c) it appeared that Her Majesty the Queen and the Prince her husband had occasionally for their amusement made drawings and etchings, principally of subjects of private and domestic interest to themselves, and had some lithographic impressions struck off by means of a private press kept for that purpose, for their own use, and not for publication. Some few impressions had indeed been given to private (a) 2 De G. & Sm. 695. (b) Per Knight Bruce, V.C., in Prince Albert v. Strange (2 De G. & Sm. 693). (c) 2 De G. & S. 652; 1 Mac. & G. 25; 13 Jur. 45, 109, 507. There was also an information filed by the Attorney-General v. Strange, for the purpose of protecting the interests of Her Majesty in those portions of the etchings which were the property of Her Majesty, and praying relief as to them similar to that prayed in the bill of Prince Albert. PART I friends of Her Majesty and the Prince, but no further publication was intended or desired. Some further copies being CHAPTER V. required, the plates for the purpose of printing them were sent to Mr. Brown, a printer at Windsor, and whilst they remained in his possession one of his workmen surreptitiously made some impressions of the etchings for himself. These surreptitiously procured impressions were subsequently obtained by a Mr. Judge, and from his possession they passed into that of the defendant Strange, a London publisher. Strange printed a catalogue of the etchings, in which was expressed an intention of publicly exhibiting the impressions of them, which had come into his possession by means of Judge. The catalogue was entitled “A Descriptive Catalogue of the Royal Victoria and Albert Gallery of Etchings," and contained, after a long introduction stating the general nature of the subjects, a detailed list of sixty-three etchings with observations upon them, chiefly of a commendatory character. The bill prayed that the defendants might be ordered to deliver up to the plaintiff all impressions and copies of the said several etchings made by the plaintiff; and that they, their servants, &c., might be restrained by injunction from exhibiting the said gallery or collection of etchings, and from selling or in any manner publishing, and from printing the said descriptive catalogue, or any work being or purporting to be a catalogue of the said etchings, and that all the copies of the said catalogue in the possession or power of the said defendants might be given up to be destroyed. An interim injunction having been granted by Knight Bruce, V.C., extending to Judge as well as Strange, the defendant Strange put in his answer, stating, amongst other things, his original belief that the impressions had come honestly into Judge's hands, that Judge wrote the descriptive catalogue, which be (Strange) then printed, striking off only fifty-one copies, after which the type was broken up, that the catalogue had never been published, or sold, or exposed for sale, and that on receiving the first information that the contemplated exhibition was disapproved of by Her Majesty and the Prince, he had abandoned the whole scheme; and he expressly denied that he ever threatened or intended to make such exhibition, or to make any copies or engravings of the etchings. After this answer had been put in, a motion was made on behalf of Strange to dissolve the injunction granted against him, so far only as it sought to restrain him from selling or in any manner publishing or printing the descriptive catalogue of the etchings, leaving unquestioned |