COPYKIGHT. 398 COPYRIGHT. senting it, is obviously included within the con- stitutional provision. But it is not clear whether the protection atlordcil by the copyright law to sculptors places them in the category of authors of writings or of inventors or designers. How- ever this may be, there is no dispute as to the authority of Congress to enact general copyright legislation. The law now in force is to be found, in sub- stance, in r. .S. Rev. Stat., Tit. 00, Chap. 3. The most impcn'tant modification of this act is the enactment of ilarch, 1891. introducing interna- tional provisions. Further amendments are: 1893, deposit of copies; 1895, limitation of pen- alty for art infringements; 1897, additional penalt}' for dramatic infringements ; 1897, in- stituting the register of copyrights; 1897, penalty for fraiidulent notice. Under the act of 1870, the supervision of the business of copyrights is placed under the control of the Librarian of Congress. Under the act of 1897. the ollice of Register of Copyrights was created. The details of the copyright business are managed by the Register, who remains, however, subject to the general supervision of the Librarian of Congress. The statute provides that two copies of the work copyrighted, printed from type set within the limits of the United States (except in the case of musical compositions), shall be deposited in the office of the Librarian of Congress not later than the day of publication of the work in this or any foreign country. The original jurisdic- tion of all suits under the copyright laws rests with the United States circuit courts. Under the interpretation of the United States courts, copy- right in publislied works exists only by virtue of the statute. The terms of these acts are very similar to those of the English law, and provide that the author, inventor, designer, or proprietor of any book, map, chart, dramatic or musical composi- tion, engraving, cut, print, or photograph, or negative thereof, or of a painting, drawing, chromo, statue, statuary, etc., being a citizen of the United States or a resident therein, or a citizen of any State which grants reciprocal privi- leges to citizens of the United States, may secure the sole liberty of printing, reprinting, publishing, copying, executing, and vending them for tile term of twenty-eight years, which period may, on the application of the author or inven- tor, or. if he be dead, of his widow or children, he extended to a further period of fourteen years. The time limit of the first American Act is that specified (for books thereafter printed) in the English statute of 1709. and was originally adopted by analogy from the Statute of ilonopo- lies (21 jac. I., c. 3), which permitted a royal patent to be granted to any inventor of a new manufacture for the sole working or making of the same for a period of fourteen years, and which is the foundation of our patent laws. Wii.T ^Iat Be the Si'B.tect of Copteigiit. In order to make clear the claim of. a work to copy- right, it is necessary that it should be original, but the originality can exist in the form or in the arrangement, as well as in the substance. Corrections and additions to an old work (itself not the property of the compiler) can also secure conyright. The copyright of private letters con- stituting literary compositions is in the composer, not in the receiver. As to the right of property in lectures, whether written or oral, the Ameri- can courts have followed the English precedents. The most important English decision on this point is that of Abernethy r.v. Hutchinson (1801). In Putnam rs. Jleyer (188ti), the New York Supreme Court held that certain tabular lists of anatomical names, arranged in a pecu- liar and arl>itrary manner for the purpose of facilitating the work of memorizing, were enti- tled to protection. Abridgments and abstracts which can be called genuine and just are also entitled to copyright. There is no record in the United States of a case in which consideratimi has been given to the question of copyright in irreligious books. It is to be borne in mind that what is thus protected by law, and thus erected into a species of property, is not the ideas, sentiments, and conceptions of the author, artist, or designer, but the substantial form in which he has embodied them. There is no pro])erty in thoughts and feel- ings, and there can therefore, in the legal sense of the term, be no theft or piracy of ideas. It is the literary or artistic creation, i.e. the form. which is protected, and not the substance. Hence ideas, whether expressed in conversation or in lectures or in copyrighted books, immediately become common property and may be employed Viy any one who will clothe them in a new and different form from that in which they were communicated to him. But the new form must be substantially different from that of the copy- righted matter. It must not be merely a dis- guised copy or reproduction of the original, for the law protects the arrangement of the matter as well as the language in which it is conveyed. On the other hand, as it is the financial and proprietary interest, and not the pride of the author, which the copyright law seeks to protect, it is no infringement of his rights to make a fair and reasonable use of a book by way of quota- tion or otherwise, whether for purposes of criti- cism or for the private use of the reader. Thus it has been held that "extracts and quotations fairly made, and not furnishing a substitute for the book itself, or operating to the injury of the author, are allowable." Furthermore, as the law is aimed at reproducing a work by printing, publishing, dramatizing, or translating any copy thereof, it is conceived that it is no infringement of the author's copyright to read in public a printed poem or other literary production, though of course it cannot be reprinted in a newspaper or magazine, even as an item of news. 'ithout permission. It has, however, been held by the English Courts that the presentation, through reading or through singing, of a copy- righted work to a pulilic which makes pa.iiient for the privilege, constitutes an infringement. It is not necessary that matter shall be liter- ary or artistic in form, nor even that it shall be original in substance, to be entitled to copyright. A translation or dramatization of another's work may be so protected, and so may be an alistract or newspaper report of a speech, a judicial opin- ion, or a debate. The law extends equally to compilations of the writings of others, to diction- aries, gazetteers, road and guide books, directo- ries, calendars, catalogues, mathematical tables, and the like, the arrangement of the material be- ing protected even though the matter of which it is composed is common property. There is in the United States no general princi- ple of law conferring the copyright on all pub-
