Re: 1790 Act

From: <ArborLaw[_at_]aol.com>
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 12:50:00 -0500 (EST)

On 2/27/97, Dan Burk <burkdanl[_at_]lanmail.shu.edu> wrote:
>
> I am beginning some research about protection of works under the
> original Copyright Act (U.S.). I am particularly interested in the
> distinction between published and unpublished works.
>
> Can anyone point me to a good resource on the Act? In particular, is
> there a nineteenth century treatise that is considered authoritative?
> (Say, the copyright analog of Robinson on Patents?)

It's not a treatise, but are you aware of L Ray Patterson's Copyright in Historical Perspective (1968), which discusses early copyright law. There is also a good summary of the historical transition from stationer's rights to author's rights, which were adopted in the US, in chs 2-3 of The Nature of Copyright, A Law of User's Rights (1991) by Patterson and Stanley Lindberg. This is not of course not the primary source material you are looking for, but a fair amount is cited in the bibliographies.

Carol Shepherd
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==--====-==-=-=-==--=--====--=-=-=-====---===-=-=-====---===---= Received on Thu Feb 27 1997 - 17:51:39 GMT