1 - Property in mental labour

Summary

In February 1774, the House of Lords was called upon to determine whether in producing an unauthorised publication of Thompson's poem The Seasons, the Scottish bookseller, Alexander Donaldson, had infringed any rights that might have existed in the work. In deciding that Donaldson was free to publish The Seasons, the House of Lords not only found against perpetual common law literary property, it also effectively marked the end of the literary property debate. This was the dispute which was conducted in the tracts, pamphlets and newspapers of the day as well as in the English and Scottish courts, concerning the status of common law literary property.

The main impetus for the literary property debate arose from changes which took place at the end of the seventeenth century in the way the book trade was regulated. Prior to this, the production and distribution of books had been regulated by way of controls exercised over printing presses and the types of works that were published. Under this regime, which was designed to prevent the circulation of seditious, heretical, obscene and blasphemous materials, the Stationers’ Company acquired a general monopoly over printing as well as over the printing of specific books. One of the consequences of the way these rights were allocated was that individual printers acquired what was in effect a perpetual monopoly over the publication of particular works. With the lapse of the Licensing Acts in 1695, however, the Stationers began to lose the control that they had long exercised over the book trade. In response to this, they began a campaign to have their monopoly powers restored. After initial attempts to persuade Parliament to reinstate the Licensing Acts failed, the Stationers ultimately convinced the legislature to introduce the Act for the Encouragement of Learning, commonly known as the Statute of Anne (1710). This provided authors and proprietors of ‘copies’ (or manuscripts) with the right to print and reprint copies of their works. In so far as the booksellers were able to convince authors to assign their rights to them, this had the effect of providing booksellers with an opportunity to reclaim some of the control they had previously exercised over the book trade.