horse that wanders near his own preserve, or of a house whose door stands open before him.

148. The word 'author,' which is, as we shall presently see, the one used both by the English and American statutes of copyright law, is not, in itself, one readily capable of exact definition. Some light may be thrown upon its precise significance by the expression used in the French copyright statute or decree of July 19th, 1793, to which we have already referred. Instead of the word authors, the expression "les auteurs d'ecrits eu tout genre " was there substituted, in the construction of which expression M. Merlin says: "Mais il ne faut pas necessaire, dans cet article, les mots ecrits en tout genre,' de l'expression 'auteurs;' et la propriété dont cet article déclare que les ecrits en tout genre sont susceptibles, ne peut evidemment etré reclamée que par ceux qui en sont auteurs, dans la véritable acception de ce terme."

Or, "le mot auteurs' quel sens a-t-il en general? Quel sens a-t-il relativement aux écrits? Quel sens a-t-il dans la loi du 19 Juillet, 1793?"

"En general, le mot auteur designe Quivant la definition qu'en donnes le dictionnaire de l'acadamie Francaise celui que est la premiere cause de la quelque chose: et il est aussi, suivant la même définition, synonyme d'inventeur.

'Applequé aux écrits, le mot auteur se del (toujours suivant le même dictionnaire) de celui qui a composé un livre, qui a fait quelques ouvrages d'esprit, en vers ou en prose, et il est bien clair qu'en ce sens, le mot auteur est opposé a copiste.

"Enfin la loi du 19 Juillet, 1793, ne permit pas de douter qu'elle n'exclue également les copistes de la denomination d'auteurs. Les littérature ou de gravure, dit-elle, art. 7, ou de toute autre production de

l'esprit ou du génie, qui appartient aux beaux-arts, en auront la propriété exclusive pendant dix années Ces termes, "ou de toute autre production de l'esprit ou du génie, qui appartient aux beaux-arts," ne sont ni obscurs ni équivoques. Ils signifient clairement que les productions de l'esprit ou du génie sont de deux sortes; que les unes consistent en ouvrages de littérature; que les autres appartienment aux beauxarts; mais que nul ne peut être réputé auteur soit d'un ouvrage de littérature, soit d'un ouvrage d'arts, si ce n'est pas à son esprit ou à son génie qu'en est due la production.

"Donc, les expressions "d'écrits en tout genre," ne sont employées dans l'art. 1er de la même loi, que pour désigner tous les genres de compositions littéraires.

"Donc, elles n'y désignent pas les écrits qui ne seraient pas des compositions, mais de simples copies.

"Donc, celui qui ne fait que copier une composition littéraire, ne peut jamais être réputé auteur de la copie de cette composition, ni par conséquent en avoir la propriété, dans le sens attaché à ce mot par la loi du 19 juillet 1793 et par le Code penal 1810."1

149. The essential attribute of one who would establish himself to be "an author" of anything, is, that he must be the first producer of the thing composed. As for instance, let us state that Shakespeare was the author of the plays which bear his name: Schlegl was the author of a translation of those plays into German: Halliwell was the author of an edition of those plays: Furness was the author of a variorum collection, from various sources, of notes to certain of those plays, Price was the author of an alphabetical

'Merlin, Répertoire de Jurisprudence, titre Contrefacon,

arrangement of sayings and proverbs taken from those plays. Now here Shakespeare, Schelgl, Collier, Furness, and Price were all authors, " de l'esprit," though only the first was, primarily, an original writer, " de génie." And so there may be, besides, an author of original matter, an author of secondary matter, such as a translation, an edition, a collection, or an arrangement. And yet the authors of all of these are authors, in the legal sense of the word, and will be protected by law in the product of their labors.

Or, again, take the case of legal reports. A reporter collects, in book form, a certain number of opinions of judges, accompanied by statements of the cases in which they were uttered. A compiler of digests takes a certain number of these reports; and, by drafting resumés of the point involved in each case found in them, forms a digest. After a certain number of digests have been published, still another compiler forms from them a table of the names of cases contained in the digests, with the volumes and pages where they occur. And still another writer may, from the reports or the digests, or both, compose an abridgment, or an index, or a compendium of practice, or innumerable volumes of use to the practicing lawyer. Now, every one of these volumes are of value to the profession. No case involving a legal question can be tried without their aid-no opinion given, or pleading drawn-and yet, if we were to insist upon the derivative meaning of "originality" and "author," neither the compiler of the reports, of the digest, nor of the index, abridgment or compendium, could be protected in the profits of his toil, in what the profession know to be its most laborious and important branches. For, in the latter case, not one of the persons mentioned have exercised the slightest invention. Even the

judges arrived at their opinions from the perusal of the opinions of other judges, and carefully guarded themselves from the exercise of any such faculty as invention-they merely pronouncing over again what had been enunciated thousands of times before.

150. In the mercantile law there is such a thing as admixtion, and rules are laid down following the ownership of the things mixed, to the very limits of possibility, and providing for the rights and remedies of all concerned. But in the law of literature no such provision is possible.

The utmost that the law can do is to require and insist that the secondary author shall have exercised original labor in devising the plan, selection, arrangement, and presentation of the materials which he has found to be in medio, and open to all. It will not be sufficient, on the one hand, that he has bestowed upon his work the manual labor of copying or clipping the material; nor will it be necessary, on the other, that he have used such judgment in discovering the wants of the public, and such skill in catering to them, as to have produced a really valuable book. But the product of actual mental labor, whether valuable1 or worthless, will be protected by law.

1"The mere utility of a book, or its adaptation to the end which it professes to answer-its value in a critical point of view-can not determine its legal originality. The law takes upon itself none of the functions of the critic, in this sense. It looks only for some substantial product of individual thought or labor, and leaves to public taste or judgment to determine its value, and to bestow its due reward. So that whether a book be more or less useful, more or less successful, or brilliant, or important, if in a just sense the claimant is the author of that in which he claims an exclusive property, he is entitled to his copyright valere quantum, valere potest. It is true, there may be cases, in which the question will arise, whether a subsequent author has made any im

So, as we shall presently see, the science of mathematics is a subject in medio; and the law will protect a man in the ownership of a set of mathematical problems or tables, calculated by himself, even though everybody knows that the problems cannot be varied because their principles are immutable; and although a calculation by any other person must, ex necessitate, produce identically the same tables, the same problems, and the same results.' Sans doute," says the learned commentator, before quoted, “Sans doute, il est des compilations d'ouvrages littéraires qui, par l'immensité des recherches qu'elles supposent, par le discernement et le goût qu'elles exigent, peuvent et doivent passer pour de véritables productions de l'esprit, et qu'il n'est pas plus permis de contrefaire que si elles étaient réellement des compositions originales. Par exemple, les Pandectes de Pothier ne sont, à peu de chose près, qu'une compilation des Institutes, du Digeste du Code et des Novelles de Justinien; c'est-à-dire, de recueils qui, depuis plusieurs siècles, sont incontestablement dans le domaine du public.

Cependant, si Pothier vivait encore, et qu'un imprimeur s'avisât de publier une édition de ses Pandectes, sans sa permission, qui est-ce qui oserait conprovements upon his predecessors; and, in such cases, it may become necessary to apply collaterally, as a test of originality, an inquiry into the practical and relative value of his publication. But this will be done, in order to determine whether he has borrowed any, and how great a part of his matter from sources common to all writers--whether he has actually produced anything of his own, and not whether his production is better or worse than the productions of others. If it appears that he has produced anything of his own, not borrowed or adopted from a previous writer, its effect in advancing or retarding the progress of knowledge, or its value in a critical point of view, can have no influence upon his title to a copyright." Curtis on Copyright, 172.

1

Bailey v. Taylor, 3 Law Journal, 66; and see post.