LITERARY PROPERTY. Property in ideas, expressed in written or printed language. Literary property, as detined Dione, is exclusive right of the owner to possess, use, and dispose of intellectual productions," and copy right is exclusive right of the owner to mul tiply and dispose of copies of an intellectual pro duction." The English statute (5, 6 Victoria) defines copyright to mean sole and exclusive liberty of printing or of otherwise multiplying collies of any subject to which the word is herein applied." The American statute ( 1:e%. Stat.. see. 4952) speaks of copyright in a book as ''the sole liberty of printing. reprinting, pub lishing. . . and vending the same." Property in an intellectual 1)1'10110AM]. com prising the exclusive right of multiplying for sale copies of literary or of art prop urtions. is of comparatively recent date. Whatever theories might have been held during the tinte of the Roman State in regard to the rightfulness of the claim of the author to enjoy the usufruct of all the copies of his production. the manifest impos sibility of securing, under the conditions then ob taining, by any process of law or any applica tion of the authority of the State. the control of such usufruct, prevented the lawyers of the time from giving any serious attest ion to the question. In these earlier discussions as to the nature of property in ideas. special attention was gi‘eu to the question whether such property should take precedence over that in the material \Odell hap pened to have been utilized for the expression of the ideas. The jurist Tribonian. cc o was sleet vd by to supervise the preparation of the Justinian Code. followed an pit ion of I;ain: (given about A.D. . which. having reference to the ownership of a certain table upon which a picture had been painted. gave the table to thy artist. This decision contains an unmistakable recognition of immaterial property, not, to be sure, in the sense of a right to exclusive repro duction, but in the particular application that, while material property depends upon the sub stance, immaterial property, that is to say prop erty in ideas, depends upon the form.
Apart from the difficulty of preventing the 'appropriation' of their literary productions, the feeling on the part of the Roman writers that authorship was not in itself a worthy vocation, but was to be considered simply as a pastime, un questionably stood in the way of arrangements under which authors secured compensation for their productions, and doubtless postponed for a considerable period the recognition by the pub lishers and by the reading public of any property rights in literature. It appears from the letters
of Cicero, Horace, Martial, and others, that they made a profit from the sale of their writings.
The scanty references which can be traced in the Latin literature of the first century to the relations of the authors with the booksellers ap pear, as might be expected, almost exclusively in the writings of the society poets. For the cen turies following the destruction of the Roman Empire, during which literary undertakings were confined almost entirely to the monasteries, the Roman usage, under which authors could dispose of their works to booksellers and the latter could be secure of some commercial control of the prop erty purchased, was entirely forgotten. No re strictions were placed on the duplication of works of literature. The statutes of the University of Paris, issued in 1223, provided that the book sellers of the university were to produce dupli cate copies of all the texts authorized for the use of the university. There is evidence of pay ments being made to the university scholars whose services were utilized in annotating these texts and in correcting the work of the copyists. The difficulty and expense attending the repro duction of manuscript was then much greater than in the early days of the Roman Empire. When. therefore, an author desired to secure for his works a wide circulation, he came to regard the reproduction not as a reserved right and source of income, but as a service to himself which be was very ready to facilitate and even to com pensate. Throughout the Aliddle Ages, whatever immaterial property in realms of science or of art obtained recognition and protection was held in ownership not by individuals, hut by churches, monasteries, or universities. The writers of the Middle Ages were satisfied when they could succeed under any conditions in getting their 'pro ductions before the public.