INFRINGEMENTS.—A suit may be maintained by the owner of a patent against one who infringes, and as this is a matter under the United States laws, all patent suits are tried in the Federal courts. A patent right is personal property, and upon the death of the owner, goes to his personal representative. Patent rights, like other personal property, may be assigned and sold.
SALE OF PATENTED ARTICLES.—In recent years, many cases have arisen over the question whether the manufacturers of patented articles are entitled to impose conditions respecting the use of their manufactured articles by purchasers. Early cases seem to support the view that, as the theory of a patent was that of a monopoly, these conditions would be upheld even after the patented articles came into the hands of a purchaser. Decisions of the United States Supreme Court, however, have tended the other way. So, attaching a notice to a patented article, stating that the article is licensed for sale and use at a specified price, and that the purchase is an acceptance of these conditions, and that in the case of a violation of this restriction, all rights revert back to the patentee, cannot convert an otherwise apparently unqualified sale into a mere license to use the invention. In Bauer v. O'Donnell, 229 U. S. 1, the Supreme Court said: "The right to vend conferred by the patent law has been exercised, and the added restriction is beyond the protection and purpose of the act. This being so, the case is brought within that line of cases in which this court, from the beginning, has held that a patentee, who has parted with a patented machine, by passing title to a purchaser, has placed the article beyond the limits of the monopoly secured by the patent act."
COPYRIGHTS.—A copyright is the exclusive privilege of printing, or otherwise multiplying, publishing and selling copies of literary or artistic productions. The nature of a copyright is thus defined by the United States Supreme Court, in the case of Caliga v. Newspaper Co., 215 U. S. 158: "Statutory copyright is not to be confounded with the common law right. At common law, the exclusive right to copy existed in the author until he permitted a general publication. Thus, when a book was published in print, the owner's common law right was lost. At common law, an author had a property in his manuscript, and might have an action against any one who undertook to publish it without authority. The statute created a new property right, giving to the author, after publication, the exclusive right to multiply copies for a limited period. This statutory right is obtained in a certain way, and by the performance of certain acts which the statute points out. That is, the author having complied with the statute, and given up his common law right of exclusive duplication, prior to general publication, obtained by the method pointed out in the statute an exclusive right to multiply copies and publish the same for the term of years named in the statute. Congress did not sanction an existing right; it created a new one."
PROPERTY RIGHT IN IDEAS.—The doctrine that a person has a property right in his ideas has never been recognized, either by common law or by statute. To illustrate: If A, in the course of a conversation with B, gives his idea of what would be a brilliant thought to work up into a detective story, and B, possessing some literary ability, takes the idea and writes a successful detective story, he is entitled to the profits secured from the sale of the book, and there is nothing that A can do about it. The idea which A handed to B has been put by B into such form that it is practicable to allow B to copyright it, and protect his property right in the story. There is no practical way to protect a mere idea.
EFFECT OF COPYRIGHT STATUTES.—One must bear in mind the effect of copyright statutes on common law rights. At common law, an author has a property in his manuscript, and may obtain redress for any attempt to deprive him of it, and the copyright act provides that nothing in the act shall limit the right of the author, at common law, or in equity, to prevent the copying, publication or use of an unpublished work, without his consent and it gives him the right to damages should this be done. At common law, the author of any literary composition had an absolute property right in his production, and he could not be deprived of it so long as it remained unpublished. Interesting questions have arisen in regard to the nature of the property rights in letters. The question as to the rights of the sender and the recipient are frequently troublesome. The rights of the writer consist in the power to make or restrain a publication by the recipient, but he cannot prevent a transfer. The rights of the recipient are those of unqualified title in the material on which they are written. He has the right to keep them, to read them, and show them to a limited circle of friends, somewhat in the same way as a family picture album might be used.
PROPERTY RIGHT IN INFORMATION OR NEWS.—Another interesting question is as to whether there can be any property right in information or news which has been collected at great expense by the Associated Press or some similar organization. The most important case on this question is that of the International News Co. v. the Associated Press, 248 U. S. 215. The Associated Press, organized in New York, is a corporation created for the purpose of collecting news and distributing it to about 950 newspapers at an annual expense of about $3,500,000. The International News Service was a corporation organized in New Jersey to collect and sell news to a chain of newspapers. The complaint was made by the Associated Press that the International News Service was engaged in pirating its news in three ways: (1) By bribing employees of newspapers, published by complainant's members, to furnish Associated Press news to defendant, before publication, for transmission by telegraph and telephone to defendant's clients, for publication by them; second, by inducing Associated Press members to violate its by-laws and permit defendant to obtain news before publication; and, third, copying news from early editions of complainant's newspapers, and selling it, either bodily or after rewriting it, to defendant's customers. The court held that news should be regarded as quasi-property, and that it was unfair competition in business for the International News Service to take from newspapers, which are members of the Associated Press, news furnished by it, and refused to modify the injunction issued by the District Court restraining any taking or using of the Associated Press news, either bodily or in substance, from bulletins issued by the Associated Press, or any of its members, or from editions of its newspapers, until its commercial value to the complainant and all of its members had passed away.
APPLICATION FOR COPYRIGHT.—The formality of securing a copyright is comparatively simple. The register of copyrights, in the library of Congress at Washington, furnishes a blank which the applicant fills out and returns, giving the required information, and on or before the first day of publication, the applicant must send two copies of the copyrighted book to the library of Congress. The copyright is good for twenty-eight years, with a right to renewal. The works for which copyrights may be secured may be classified as: (a) Books, including composite and cyclopedic books, directories, gazetteers, and other compilations; (b) periodicals, including newspapers; (c) lectures, sermons, and addresses, prepared for oral delivery; (d) dramatic or dramatic-musical compositions; (e) musical compositions; (f) maps; (g) works of art, models or designs for works of art; (h) reproductions of a work of art; (i) drawings or plastic works of scientific or technical character; (j) photographs; (k) prints and pictorial records. There are certain things, which, while technically they are under the classification we have given, are not subject of copyright. The opinions handed down by the judges of all of our courts, although they are in the form which would ordinarily permit copyright, are not subject of copyright because of the general principle of law that a judge receives a stated annual salary and cannot, therefore, have any pecuniary interests in the fruits of his judicial labors. This does not mean, however, that the opinions of the United States Supreme Court, for example, are not to be found in a copyrighted book. The Supreme Court Reporter, which is one of the systems of reporters published by the West Publishing Co. as a purely commercial enterprise, is copyrighted by that company. This is because of the fact that the editorial staff of the West Publishing Co. prepares a syllabus for each opinion, an exhaustive index in each volume, and a table of cases, and all of this matter arranged by that company, is subject to copyright, and they have the right to use the opinions of the Supreme Court the same as any other publisher would have. Again, a copyright might be refused on the grounds that the book on which the copyright was sought was an immoral or obscene writing, and therefore not entitled to protection of the copyright law. The word "Copyrighted" accompanied by the name of the copyright proprietor should appear on the page opposite the title page, or if the article copyrighted is a picture, the act provides that the device, accompanied by the initials or the symbol of the copyright proprietor, shall appear on the article.
SUBJECTS OF COPYRIGHT.—In the classification we have just given, mention is made of lectures, sermons, etc., as being the subject of copyright. It is held, however, that a lecture, delivered orally to a class of students, is not published to the extent that the instructor loses his right to it, although the students may be allowed to make notes for their own use. In the same way, the artist does not lose his common law copyright by an exhibition of his pictures in his studio or in a public gallery where they are placed for sale. Similarly the public presentation of a dramatic production does not deprive the owner of his rights in it. The reason for this is that at common law the public performance of a play does not mean an abandonment to the public generally.
TRADE MARKS AND TRADE NAMES.—A trade mark or trade name is a mark or symbol which the tradesman puts upon his goods, so that they may be identified and known by the public generally. A trade name differs from a trade mark in that it is descriptive of the manufacturer himself, and involves the individuality of the maker. Statutes will be found covering the registration of trade marks and trade names, but the protection which the law affords the owner of these is not confined to a statute alone. It is generally held that a trade mark, subject to some qualifications, arises without the aid of any statute.
SUBJECT MATTER OF TRADE MARK OR TRADE NAME.—The question as to what is the subject-matter of a trade mark or a trade name, can only be determined by a careful reading of the cases. A trade mark may consist of a name, a symbol, a letter, some arbitrary form, or a newly-coined word. Pictures of animals, coats of arms, and the like, are frequently used. No trade mark can be obtained by the mere use of a color or generally a geographical term, nor can a trade mark be obtained from the form of a package in which goods are packed, and generally, mere letters and numbers cannot form a trade mark, although the arbitrary combination of numbers, such as "Babbitt's 1776" may be a valid trade mark.