Holmes v. Hurst
| Decision Date | 24 April 1899 |
| Docket Number | No. 124,124 |
| Citation | 174 U.S. 82,43 L.Ed. 904,19 S.Ct. 606 |
| Parties | HOLMES v. HURST |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
This was a bill in equity by the executor of the will of the late Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, praying for an injunction against the infringement of the copyright of a book originally published by plaintiff's testator under the title of 'The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.'
The case was tried upon an agreed statement of facts, the material portions of which are as follows:
Dr. Holmes, the testator, was the author of 'The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table,' which, during the years 1857 and 1858, was published by Phillips, Sampson & Co., of Boston, in 12 successive numbers of the Atlantic Monthly, a periodical magazine published by them, and having a large circulation. Each of these 12 numbers was a bound volume of 128 pages, consisting of a part of 'The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table,' and of other literary compositions. These 12 parts were published under an agreement between Dr. Holmes and the firm of Phillips, Sampson & Co., whereby the author granted them the privilege of publishing the same, the firm stipulating that they should have no other right in or to said book. No copyright was secured, either by the author or by the firm or by any other person, in any of the 12 numbers so published in the Atlantic Monthly; but on November 2, 1858, after the publication of the last of the 12 numbers, Dr. Holmes deposited a printed copy of the title of the book in the clerk's office of the district court of the district of Massachusetts, wherein the author resided, which opy the clerk recorded. The book was published by Phillips, Sampson & Co. in a separate volume on November 22, 1858, and upon the same day a copy of the same was delivered to the clerk of the district court. The usual notice, namely, 'Entered according to act of congress, 1858, by Oliver Wendell Holmes, in the clerk's office of the district court of the district of Massachusetts,' was printed in every copy of every edition of the work subsequently published, with a slight variation in the edition published in June, 1874.
On July 12, 1886, Dr. Holmes recorded the title a second time, sent a printed copy of the title to the librarian of congress, who recorded the same in a book kept for that purpose and also caused a copy of this record to be published in the Boston Weekly Advertiser; and in the several copies of every edition subsequently published was the following notice: 'Copyright, 1886, by Oliver Wendell Holmes.'
Since November 1, 1894, defendant has sold and disposed of a limited number of copies of the book entitled 'The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table,' all of which were copied by the defendant from the 12 numbers of the Atlantic Monthly exactly as they were originally published, and upon each copy so sold or disposed of a notice appeared that the same was taken from the said 12 numbers of the Atlantic Monthly.
The case was heard upon the pleadings and this agreed statement of facts by the circuit court for the Eastern district of New York, and the bill dismissed. 76 Fed. 757. From this decree an appeal was taken to the circuit court of appeals for the Second circuit, by which the decree of the circuit court was affirmed. 51 U. S. App. 271, 25 C. C. A. 610, and 80 Fed. 514. Whereupon plaintiffs took an appeal to this court.
Rowland Cox, for appellant.
Andrew Gilhooly, for appellee.
Mr. Justice BROWN, after stating the facts in the foregoing language, delivered the opinion of the court.
This case raises the question whether the serial publication of a book in a monthly magazine, prior to any steps taken towards securing a copyright, is such a publication of the same, within the meaning of the act of February 3, 1831, as to vitiate a copyright of the whole book, obtained subsequently, but prior to the publication of the book as an entirety.
The right of an author, irrespective of statute, to his own productions and to a control of their publication, seems to have been recognized by the common law, but to have been so ill defined that from an early period legislation was adopted to regulate and limit such right. The earliest recognition of this common-law right is to be found in the charter of the Stationers' Company, and certain decrees of the star chamber promulgated in 1556, 1585, 1623, and 1637, providing for licensing and regulating the manner of printing and the number of presses throughout the kingdom, and prohibiting the publication of unlicensed books. Indeed, the star chamber seems to have exercised the power of search, confiscation, and imprisonment without interruption from parliament, up to its abolition, in 1641. From this time the law seems to have been in an unsettied stat—although parliament made some efforts to restrain the licentiousness of the press—until the eighth year of Queen Anne, when the first copyright act was passed, giving authors a monopoly in the publication of their works for a period of from 14 to 28 years. Notwithstanding this act, however, the chancery courts continued to hold that, by the common law and independently of legislation, there was a property of unlimited duration in printed books. This principle was affirmed so late as 1769 by the court of king's bench in the very carefully considered case of Millar v. Taylor, 4 Burrows, 2303, in which the right of the author of 'Thompson's Seasons' to a monopoly of this work was asserted and sustained. But a few years thereafter the house of lords, upon an equal division of the judges, declared that the common-law right had been taken away by the statute of Anne, a d that authors were limited in their monopoly by that act. Donaldson v. Becker, Id. 2408. This remains the law of England to the present day. An act similar in its provisions to the statute of Anne was enacted by congress in 1790, and the construction put upon the latter in Donaldson v. Becket was followed by this court in Wheaton v. Peters, 8 Pet. 591. While the propriety of these decisions has been the subject of a good deal of controversy among legal writers, it seems now to be considered the settled law of this country and England that the right of an author to a monopoly of his publications is measured and determined by the copyright act, in other words, that, while a right did exist by common law, it has been superseded by statute.
The right thus secured by the copyright act is not a right to the use of certain words, because they are the common property of the human race, and are as little susceptible of private appropriation as air or sunlight; nor is it the right to ideas alone, since in the absence of means of communicating them they are of value to no one but the author. But the right is to that arrangement of words which the author has selected to express his ideas, or, as Lord Mansfield describes it, ...
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