Re: Donaldson v. Becket

Tuesday, February 22 2000, is the 226th anniversary of the decision by the English House of Lords in Donaldson v. Becket, 17 Parl. Hist. Eng. 953 (1774) in which the lords, by twenty-two votes to eleven, dissolved an injunction against Alexander Donaldson, thereby laying down the law that copyright in published works was not perpetual, but was limited to the term provided by statute. When news of the lords' decision reached Edinburgh, Scotland, there was

     great rejoicing...upon victory over literary property:
     bonfires and illuminations, ordered though by a mob, with
     drum and two pipes.  (Robert Forbes, _The Lyon in Mourning_
     III, 294, quoted in John Murray, "Some Civil  Cases of James
     Boswell," Juridical Review 52, 222-251(1940), at 248-249.)

The decision temporarily checked a decades-long attempt on the part of the London booksellers to to use the common law and the notion of "authors' rights" to re-establish something like the privileges they had enjoyed in the days of the Stationers' monopoly. The booksellers' true regard for authors was questioned by Attorney General Thurlow, who spoke as follows before the Lords on February 4, 1774:

     The booksellers [Attorney-General Thurlow] observed...
     had not, till lately, ever concerned themselves
     about authors, but had generally confined the
     substance of their prayers to the legislature, to
     the security of their own property; nor would they
     probably have, of late years, introduced the authors
     as parties in their claims to the common law right
     of exclusively multiplying copies, had not they
     found it necessary to give a colourable face to their
     monopoly...He concluded his speech with...a hope, that
     as the lords of session in Scotland had freed that country
     from a monopoly which took its rise from the chimerical
     idea of the actuality of literary property, their lordships,
     whom he addressed, would likewise, by a decree of a
     similar nature, rescue the cause of literature and
     authorship from the hands of a few monopolizing
     booksellers, in whom the perquisites of other men's
     labors, the fruits of their inventions, and result
     of their ingenuity, were at present wholly centered.
     (Donaldson v. Becket, 17 Parl. Hist. Eng. 953, at 954-955.)

The mention of the Scots Lords was a reference to the case of Hinton v. Donaldson, which had been decided in July 1773, with the Lords of Session holding, by eleven votes to one, that copyright did not exist in the law of Scotland except as provided for by the statute of 8 Anne.

In our days, when the public domain's cultured despisers hold the public domain up to ridicule and contempt, I find it inspiring to remember freedom's past victories. Doing so gives me hope, even in the present dark hour, that truth and freedom may yet prevail.

The order in Donaldson v. Becket reads as follows:

        February 22... Ordered, That the Decree be
        reversed without costs of suit.

        List of those noblemen who divided on the
        above question for reversing the Decree:
        dukes of Roxburgh, Bolton; earls of Denbigh,
        Gower, Sandwich, Spencer, Radnor, Jersey,
        Northington, Oxford, Abercorn, Loudon,
        Roseberry; viscounts Say and Sele, Weymouth,
        Falmouth; lords Camden, Ravensworth,
        Montague; bishops of St. Asaph, Litchfield
        and Coventry.--For confirming the decree:
        dukes of NOrthumberland, Portland; marquis of
        Rockingham; earls of Carlisle, Fitswilliam;
        viscounts Dudley, Torrington; lords Bruce,
        Lyttelton; archbishop of Canturbury; bishop
        of Chester.

Tim Phillips
<hrothgar[_at_]telepath.com> Received on Mon Feb 21 2000 - 00:37:46 GMT