Case ID: f_142/html/0966-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "DALLAS, Circuit Judge.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA CO. v. AMERICAN NEWSPAPER ASS’N et al.
    (Circuit Court of Appeals, Third Circuit.
    January 24, 1906.)
    No. 43.
    Copyright — Interim Copyright Act — Construction.
    The Interim Copyright Act of January 7, 1904, c. 2, 33 Stat. 4, which extended copyright protection for two years to exhibitors at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, of foreign books, etc., which had not been copyrighted in the United States, on complying with its provisions, cannot be construed to apply to books of foreign authors which had previously been republished and sold in the United States without copyright; such books not being within the spirit of the act nor the intention of its makers.
    I'Ed. Note. — For cases in point, see vol. 11, Cent. Dig. Copyrights, § 34.]
    Appeal from the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of New Jersey.
    For opinion below, see 135 Fed. 841.
    See 130 Fed. 460.
    Edmund A. Whitman, for appellant.
    Augustus' T. Gurlitz, for appellee.
    Before DALLAS and GRAY, Circuit Judges, and BUFFING-TON, District Judge.
   DALLAS, Circuit Judge.

The decree dismissing the bill of complaint in this case was right, and we adopt as our own the opinion by which it was vindicated in the court below. Encyclopedia Co. v. Werner (C. C.) 135 Fed. 841. The learned judge appropriately and correctly applied to the construction of the provisions of the Interim Copyright Act of January 7, 1904, c. 2, 33 Stat. 4, upon which the appellant relied, the familiar rule “that a thing may be within the letter of the statute, and yet not within the statute, because not within its spirit, nor within the intention of its makers.” Holy Trinity Church v. United States, 143 U. S. 457, 12 Sup. Ct. 511, 36 L. Ed. 226; Rothschild v. Adler-Weinberger S. S. Co., 130 Fed. 866, 65 C. C. A. 350.

The decree is affirmed.