Page:Copyright, Its History And Its Law (1912).djvu/417

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

BRITISH EMPIRE 385

copyright law, subject to amendments since passed and approved. The Imperial and Canadian laws of 1875, taken together, make it possible to issue in Can- ada cheaper reprints of British copyright works, by arrangement with the author or copyright owner, without interfering with the more costly English edi- tions.

It should here be noted that the Canadian act of License acts 1889, as amended by the Canadian act of 1895, con- «iisallowed stituting Part II of chapter 70 of the Revised Statutes, 1906, has never been approved and brought into force by proclamation of the Governor-General. The act of 1889, following the Imperial international copy- right act of 1886, extended Canadian copyright on condition of registration with the Minister of Agri- culture, and printing and publication or production in Canada within one month after publication or pro- duction elsewhere, and provided that the Minister of Agriculture might grant licenses, not exclusive, for the production of works not thus protected on an un- dertaking to pay to the author ten per cent royalty on the retail price, in which case importation of for- eign-made (but not British) editions might be pro- hibited during the copyright period. The act of 1895 extended this license system to works which the copy- right proprietor failed to keep in print in Canada, un- less he should give satisfactory assurance of prompt re-issue. These acts, as noted, never became effect- ive.

In 1900 an amendment to the copyright act was The Fisher passed which is sometimes referred to as the Fisher »«*» ^900 act. It provides that if a book, as to which there is subsisting Canadian copyright under the copyright act, has first been published in any part of the Brit- ish dominions other than Canada, and the owner of the copyright has granted a license to reproduce in