Copyright
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 210 U.S. 339 - Bobbs-Merrill Company v. Isidor Straus R H · 1908Most cited · 441 citing opinions
The copyright is an exclusive right to the multiplication of the copies, for the benefit of the author or his assigns, disconnected from the plate, or any other physical existence. It is an incorporeal right to print and publish the map; or, as said by Lord Mansfield in Millar v. Taylor, 4 Burr. 2396, 'a property in notion, and has no corporeal, tangible substance.
How the Supreme Court has restated “Copyright”
Each Supreme Court definition of “Copyright,” sized by how often later courts cited it. “Change” is measured by wording overlap with earlier definitions — a rough signal, not a semantic judgment.
How often courts cite the cases defining “Copyright”
Court decisions citing the 4 opinions that defined “Copyright” — 757 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining cases as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.
All 4 definitions, chronological · 1852–1939
- ORIGINAL
The copy-right is an exclusive right to the multiplication of the copies, for the benefit of the author or his assigns, disconnected from the plate, or any other physical existence. It is an incorporeal right to print and publish the map, or, as said by Lord Mansfield in Millar v. Taylor (4 Burr. 2396,) 'a property in notion, and has no corporeal tangible substance.
the purpose of the copyright law is not so much the protection and control of the visible thing as to secure a monopoly, having a limited time, of the right to publish the production, which is the result of the inventor's thought. ... While it is true that the property in copyright in this country is the creation of statute, the nature and character of the property grows out of the recognition of the separate ownership of the right of copying from that which inheres in the mere physical control of the thing itself.
Petitioner's claim of copyright came to fruition immediately upon publication. Without further notice it was good against all the world.