The Roots of Anglo-American Copyright

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Copyright for Educators & Librarians

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Duke University

Copyright for Educators & Librarians

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Fear and uncertainty about copyright law often plagues educators and sometimes prevents creative teaching. This course is a professional development opportunity designed to provide a basic introduction to US copyright law and to empower teachers and librarians at all grade levels. Course participants will discover that the law is designed to help educators and librarians.

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A Framework for Thinking about Copyright

In the U.S., copyright is first and foremost a federal law passed by Congress under authority given it by the Constitution, where it says that Congress is allowed to pass laws to (among other things) promote the progress of science and the useful arts by securing for limited time to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writing and discoveries. This authorization allows Congress to adopt both copyright laws which protect creative expression, and patent laws, which are very different and provide exclusive rights in inventions. In this unit we will examine what is copyright and how it happens.

What is Copyright 4:18

The Roots of Anglo-American Copyright 10:11

Copyright Moves Across the Pond9:36

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Kevin Smith, M.L.S., J.D.
Former Director, Copyright and Scholarly Communication
Duke University Libraries
Lisa A. Macklin, J.D.,M.L.S.
Director, Scholarly Communications Office
Robert W. Woodruff Library, Emory University
Anne Gilliland, JD, MLS
Scholarly Communications Officer
University Libraries, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Hi everyone, this is Kevin Smith, and for

this segment of our first week on copyright for educators,

I want to give you a brief introduction to the history of copyright.

Our hope is that even a pass acquaintance with this history will help you make

the pieces fit together a little bit better, as we go through the more

detailed discussion of U.S. law that we're going to pursue over the next four weeks.

So let's get started.

The idea of copyright began with something called

a Letter Patent that was issued by the king this is the case in England.

I don't want you to get confused by the word patent.

Copyright and patent today are very, very different legal regimes.

But this idea of copyright, this idea of an exclusive right that would be

granted to a printer to print a particular book or categories of books,

began with this issuance of letters patent by the king.

By getting a letter patent, a printer was authorized to purchase a copy of the book,

this is why we call it copyright, from the author and publish that book exclusively.

Often there were categories of books, so prayer books or

school textbooks, only one printer could print.

The basic idea of this was to prevent there being massive competition in

the printing industry, the very, very early printing industry and

to give the king control over what was printed and what was read.

And, of course, this was a new technology printing was a brand new technology.

The king of England had already seen from the religious wars in Europe

that the power of printing was very great for stirring up trouble.

And the king was interested in keeping control over what was published,

and therefore issued these letters to allow only certain people to print books.

In 1557 Queen Mary chartered the Royal Company of Stationers.

These were the people who originally sold paper and

they became the early printers and publishers.

And that group received a privilege under the licensing act of 1662 to print books.

They were the only people who were allowed to print books.

You had to be a member of this guild,

The Royal Company of Stationers, in order to print books in England.

And if anybody else tried to print books the Royal Company of Stationers was

authorized to seize and burn the unauthorized books.

So this was very strong control over publishing.

And the guild was allowed to give exclusivity

even to printers who did not have a separate royal patent.

So, if somebody wanted to print a particular book, and

they negotiated with the publisher, and they were a member of the Royal Company of

Stationers, they could go to the Stationers hall and

enter into a registry their intent to print this book.

And nobody else would be allowed to do that.

Another interesting part of this was that early on,

the stationers agreed to a deposit requirement.

And what that meant is, that they agreed to put a copy of

every new book that was printed on the Oxford University library.

This was an agreement that was a signed with Thomas Bodley in 1610.

You may recognise that Thomas Bodley was the Oxford librarian at the time, and

the library of Oxford still carries his name, it's called the Bodleian library.

But this is the beginning, of this link between copyright, and

the deposit requirement that helps to build a national library.

And we still have that link in U.S. law.

In U.S. law,

every copyrighted work is supposed to be deposited in the library of Congress.

So, this is a very old idea that's been around and we still hang

onto in the U.S.

this charter that I told you about, that the Royal Company of Stationers had,

lapsed in 1695.

And there was a real question then of who is authorized to publish books.

The desire for strong control censorship, if you will,

had gotten less over the years, but the stationers still wanted their privilege.

And, all of a sudden other people were allowed to print books, and

the stationers were facing competition that they would rather not have.

So they began to lobby Parliament to renew, they asked for a permanent

renewal of this charter that would make them the sole publishers in England.

Parliament wasn't willing to do that.

And so their early efforts to get this charter for

the royal company of stationers didn't work.

But over time they changed their tactics.

They began to stress the benefits to authors.

And we were beginning to see a real attitude towards authors,

that they were unique and individual geniuses who created these works.

And it was much more sympathetic to present

the needs of authors to parliament, than it had been to present the needs of

a particular guild that really just wanted a monopoly business.

That worked and in 1710, as I'll tell you in a minute, parliament

did pass the Statute of Anne, the first copyright law of the Anglo American world.

But I also want to emphasize here that this tactic, this decision to

stress benefits to the authors, even though it's very often

deployed by business that are simply looking to avoid unwanted competition,

has been around, again for a long time and we still see it today.

We see the publishing industry, the recording industry, and

the movie industry.

Often making appeals to the well-being of creators,

when what's really happening is that trade regulations are being enacted.

So let's talk about the Statue of Anne.

The Statue of Anne was the first statutory copyright law,

as opposed to these licenses or charters given by the, by the king or queen.

The Statute of Anne was adopted by Parliament in 1710, and

it gave the exclusive right in copy, in the manuscript of a book, for 14 years.

It's given to the author and the author's chosen printer.

So it is kind of an author's right.

In the sense that the author gets to choose whoever they want

to publish their book.

But it doesn't go into effect, until the book is actually published.

So it becomes a monopoly right for the publisher.

As I said, the earliest copyright law allowed copyright for only 14 years.

And the author, if they were still alive,

at the end of that 14 years, could get a renewal for another 14 years.

If the author had died, in the course of the first 14 years,

copyright lapsed, and it always lapsed after 28 years.

As I think I've already said,

copyright was obtained through a registration with the stationer's company,

and deposit of the published book in the Bodleian library.

So that's when copyright actually started.

And if a book hadn't been published,

if it was just an unpublished manuscript, it did not get copyright protection.

So what happens when that 28 years expires?

Well, remember the publishers were not very willing to have competition.

So when the copyrights started to expire, they had problems.

There were Scottish printers who began to publish books.

That had been published previously under this exclusive

regime by the London company of stationers.

When copyright started to expire and

the London stationers wanted to stop this competition from Scottish printers,

they began to rely on the author's natural right in their works.

The ownership that they said existed by simply by natural right.

And they tried to ask the courts and ultimately, the house of lords,

which is the Supreme Court for the United Kingdom,

to tell authors that they had this natural right.

And so, there would not be competition between the Scottish and

the British publishers, the English publishers.

In the case of Donaldson vs Beckett in 1774,

the house of lords decided this issue.

And what they decided was that, that 28 year statutory term, that

amount that was allowed by the statute of Ann, was all the right that there was.

Once it had expired, the books went into the public domain.

Neither the author, nor the publisher retained any rights

over their books after the term of copyright had expired.

And, as I'm sure you realize, what happened here was that in this case,

in Donaldson vs Beckett,.

The house of lords essentially created the public domain.

They created the idea that there would be creative works, works of literature, works

of knowledge that were not owned by anyone after some particular period of time.

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