Musical Composition

The copyright act of March 4, 1909, provides for protection to dramatic or dramatico-musical compositions. It grants the exclusive right in the case of a musical composition to perform the copyrighted work publicly for profit, and, for the purpose of printing, publishing and vending the work, to make any arrangement or setting of it or of the melody of it in any system of notation or any form of record in which the thought of the author may be recorded and from which it may be read or reproduced, provided that the act, so far as it secures copyright controlling the parts of instruments serving to reproduce mechanically the musical work, shall include only compositions published and copyrighted after the act goes into effect, and not the works of a foreign composer unless his nation grants to citizens of the United States similar rights, and provided that when the owner has used or permitted or knowingly acquiesced in the use of the work upon the parts of instruments serving to reproduce mechanically the work, any other person may make similar use of it upon paying a royalty of two cents on each such part manufactured, and provided that the owner, if he uses the composition himself for mechanical reproduction or licenses others, shall file operated machined shall not bo deemed a public performance for profit unless a fee is charged for admission to the place of reproduction. A musical composition as an idea or intellectual conception IS not subject to copyright, but only its material embodiment in the form of writing or print may be copyrighted; White-Smith M. P. Co. v. Apollo Co., 209 U. S. 1, 28 Sup. Ct. 319, 62 L. Ed. 655, 14 Ann. Cas. 628. Perforated rolls for mechanical piano players do not infringe; id. Where one sings an entire copyrighted song with musical accompaniment, it Is an Infringement, though the singer purports merely to mimic another. But not singing of a single verse and chorus without musical accompaniment; Green v. Luby, 177 Fed. 287, nor where, in mlmicing an actress and her postures and gestures, the singer used the verse of the song only as a vehicle; Bloom V. Nixon, 125 Fed. 977. See COPYEIQHT.