美国版权法(第一部分)

• “solemnly adjudged in Great Britain, to be a right of common law.” • Statute of Anne 1709 (England)
– 14 years © plus another 14 if author still living – 21 years for works already published – Controversy over whether © endured at common law after expiry of statutory time limits – Millar v. Taylor (1769) 4 Burr. 2303, 98 ER 201
“The utility of this power will scarcely be questioned. The copyright of authors has been solemnly adjudged in Great Britain, to be a right of common law. The right to useful inventions seems with equal reason to belong toHale Waihona Puke Baiduthe inventors. The public good fully coincides in both cases with the claims of individuals. The States cannot separately make effectual provisions for either of the cases, and most of them have anticipated the decision of this point, by laws passed at the instance of Congress.”
• Governing U.S. philosophy: private (individual profit motive serves the public good) • “To promote the progress of science *knowledge+”
• The States cannot separately make effectual provisions for [copyright]
• Early attempts to extend copyright protection to foreign (French and English) authors failed.
– S. Rep. No. 179, 24th Cong., 2d Sess. (1837): “*Limiting the © to nation-origin works] would have been hostile to the object of the power granted. That object was to promote the progress of science and useful arts. They belong to no particular country, but to mankind generally. And it cannot be doubted that the stimulus which it was intended to give to mind and genius . . . will be increased by the motives of which the bill offers to the inhabitants to Great Britain and France.”
• Articles of Confederation (preConstitution document) gave no power to enact copyright laws • Continental Congress passed a resolution encouraging states to pass copyright laws • All but one of the original states had copyright legislation
• The first copyright statute, passed by the Connecticut Assembly in 1783, afforded protection only to “the author of any book or pamphlet not yet printed, or of any map or chart, being an inhabitant or resident of these United States.” In the same year, the Massachusetts General Court issued a copyright statute that was similarly limited to “any subject of the United States.”
• Act of May 31, 1790, c. 15, 1 Stat. 124 § 1
– 14 year term – Additional 14 years if author survived
• § 1 limited copyright protection to person(s) “being a citizen or citizens of these United States, or residents therein”). Like the original state copyright laws, protection extended only to citizens of the United States. • Foreign-origin works were in the public domain.
• Rights endure at common law
– Donaldson v. Beckett (1774) 4 Burr. 2408
• Statute of Anne replaces the common law
• The public good fully coincides in both cases with the claims of individuals
Lecture 1
Introduction
U.S. and International Copyright Relationships
1. Constitutional Initiatives
Federalist 43 (1788): A power “to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing, for a limited time, to authors and inventors, the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”
• It became a popular practice to reprint cheap editions of best-selling English books and sell them without the burden of royalties, a practice which infuriated both English authors who went uncompensated by the marketing of their books in America and American writers whose sales were undercut by cheap reprints of English books.
• “Congress shall have power to promote the progress of science [knowledge] by securing for limited times to authors the exclusive rights in their writings”
– Copyright Enactments of the United States (Solberg ed., 1906), at 11-14.
2.Federal Copyright Law (1790)
• Copyright legislation is empowered by art. I.8.8. of the federal constitution (1788)
• This Bill failed to pass.
Charles Dickens (1842)
• “I spoke, as you know, of international copyright, at Boston; and I spoke of it again at Hartford. My friends were paralyzed with wonder at such audacious daring. The notion that I, a man alone by himself, in America, should venture to suggest to the Americans that there was one point on which they were neither just to their own countrymen nor to us, actually struck the boldest dumb! *…+ Every man who writes in this country is devoted to the question, and not one of them dares to raise his voice and complain of the atrocious state of the law. It is nothing that of all men living I am the greatest loser by it. It is nothing that I have a claim to speak and be heard. The wonder is that a breathing man can be found with temerity enough to suggest to the Americans the possibility of their having done wrong. *…+ My blood so boiled as I thought of the monstrous injustice that I felt as if I were twelve feet high when I thrust it down their throats.”
United States Copyright Law in International Perspective
Latest Developments in U.S. Copyright Law
Dr. Prof. Graeme W. Austin J. Byron Professor of Law, University of Arizona, USA Professorial Fellow, Melbourne University Law School, AUSTRALIA Honorary Fellow, Victoria University of Wellington, NZ