CHAPTER XVII. COPYRIGHT. SECTION I.-COPYRIGHT LAWS. 298. COPYRIGHT is the exclusive right of an author to copy, print, engrave, photograph, translate, abridge, or multiply what he has himself produced by pen, pencil, or chisel. 299. The object of copyright is to increase the general stock of learning within the country, and to protect the author, thereby inducing him to publish his work. In In the United Kingdom copyright for books is for forty-two years from publication, or for the life of the author and a term of seven years from his death. France copyright is guaranteed to authors and their widows during their lives, to their children for twenty years, and if they leave no children, to their heirs for ten years. In Prussia copyright continues for the author's life, and for thirty years after his death. In Austria the term is the same. In Holland copyright is limited to the life of the author and twenty years thereafter; in Denmark, it is for the author's life and thirty years; in Sweden, for life and twenty years; in Spain, for life and fifty years after; in Russia, for life and twenty-five years, and for ten years more if an edition is published within five years of the end of the first term. In Greece copyright is for fifteen years from publication; in Italy, for life and forty years, with a second term of forty years, during which any one can publish the work upon paying a royalty to the author or his assigns; in the United States, for twenty-eight years from the time of recording the title thereof, and for fourteen years more if recorded anew within six months before the expiration of the same. 300. The persons capable of obtaining copyright in any country are―(1) a natural born, or a naturalized subject, in which case the place of residence at the time of the publication of the book is immaterial; (2) a person who, at the time of the publication of the book in which copyright is to be obtained, owes local or temporary allegiance to the State, by residing at that time in some part of the same; and (3) an alien friend who first publishes a book in the country, even although resident out of the same. 301. By Treaty a mutuality of literary protection has been secured, whereby the republication or piracy, in either country, of any work of literature or of art published in the other, shall be dealt with in the same manner as the republication or piracy of a work of the same nature first published in such other country. SECTION II. TREATY CLAUSES CONCERNING [Convention concerning the protection of literary and artistic works between France, Germany, Great Britain, Hayti, Honduras, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Norway, Switzerland, and Tunis, September 18, 1885.] A conference was held at Berne, on September 6, 1886, for the purpose of signing the International Copyright Convention. But the Convention has not yet been laid before the British Parliament. 302. The contracting States are formed into a Union for the protection of the rights of authors over their literary and artistic works, 303. Authors of any of the countries of the Union, or their lawful representatives, are to enjoy in the other countries for their works, whether published in one of their countries or unpublished, the rights which the respective laws do now or may hereafter grant to natives. 304. The enjoyment of these rights in respect to the accomplishment of the conditions and formalities prescribed by law in the country of origin of the work, cannot exceed in the other countries the term of protection granted in the said country of origin. 305. The country of origin of the works is that in which the work is first published, or if such publication takes place simultaneously in several countries of the Union, that one of them in which the shortest term of protection is granted by law. 306. For unpublished works the country to which the author belongs is considered the country of origin of the work. 307. The stipulations of the present Convention apply equally to the publishers of literary and artistic works published in one of the countries of the Union, but of which the authors belong to a country which is not a party to the Union. 308. The expression "literary and artistic works" comprehends books, pamphlets, and all other writings; dramatic or dramatico-musical works; musical compositions with or without words; works of design, painting, sculpture, and engraving; lithographs, illustrations, geographical charts; plans, sketches, and plastic works relative to geography, topography, architecture, or science in general; in fact, every production whatsoever in the literary, scientific, or artistic domain which can be published by any mode of impression or reproduction. 309. Authors of any of the countries of the Union, or their lawful representatives, shall enjoy in the other countries the exclusive right of making or authorizing the translation of their works until the expiration of ten years from the publication of the original work in one of the countries of the Union. 310. For works published in incomplete parts |