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The United States and International Copyright

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 April 2017

Max M. Kampelman*
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota

Extract

The word “copyright” comes from the Latin copia, which is translated as “plenty” and which means, in general, the right to make plenty or to copy. In its specific application it means the right to multiply copies of those products of the human brain known as literature and art. It has also been defined as “the power to determine whether the work shall be published at all, the manner in which, if published, it shall be done, and to whom.”

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of International Law 1947

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References

1 Wittenberg, Philip, The Protection and Marketing of Literary Property, New York, 1937, p. 11 Google Scholar.

A more modern and legally accurate definition of copyright can be found in Amdur, Leon H., Copyright Law and Practice, New York, 1936, p. 5 Google Scholar: “The exclusive right, conferred by statute, to publish, multiply, and sell copies of a work, to make transformations and modifications thereof, and to perform and otherwise represent it in public, after it has been first published; except that these ‘exclusive’ rights do not prevent others from enjoying equivalent rights in works originated by them although closely identical, and except that these rights do not prohibit ‘fair use’ to be made of the copyrighted work.”

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10 Article I, Section 8, Clause 8.

11 1 Statutes at Large 124.

12 2 St. L. 171; 4 St. L. 436; 11 St. L. 138; 13 St. L. 540; 16 St. L. 212.

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49 Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Czechoslovakia, Cuba, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, France, Germany, Great Britain, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Poland, Portugal, Salvador, Siam, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tunis, and Uruguay.

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51 Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Danzig, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France and her colonies, Germany, Great Britain and its possessions, Greece, Haiti, Hungary, India, Irish Free State, Italy, Japan, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Morocco, Monaco, the Netherlands and its possessions, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal and its colonies, Rumania, Siam, Spain and its colonies, Sweden, Switzerland, Tunis, Union of South Africa, the Vatican, Yugoslavia.

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